Nobody forgets the big subscription. The one that hurts is the third music service, the app trial from a year ago that quietly became a paid plan, the cloud storage you upgraded once for a trip.
Each is small. Together they are one of the few household costs most people could not list from memory. This is a way to list them all in about half an hour, then decide which ones earn their place.
You will need your phone, your email, and your last two or three months of bank and card statements. The steps are the same in any country; the menus move around, so where a screen name is given below, search the company’s help pages if yours looks different.
Step 1: set a timer for 30 minutes
The audit goes wrong when it turns into a project. Half an hour is enough to find most of what there is to find. Anything you cannot trace in that time goes on a separate list for next week.
Step 2: read the statements (10 minutes)
This is where the most are found, because every subscription leaves a trace in the money going out.
- Take the last three months of statements for every account and card you use. Three months catches monthly charges at least twice, and quarterly ones once.
- Go down each statement and mark every payment that appears more than once, for the same or a similar amount, from the same name.
- Mark every payment you do not recognise. Look the name up before assuming the worst: card statements often show a company’s legal or payment-processor name, not the brand you signed up to.
- Add annual charges by looking back twelve months if your bank lets you. A yearly renewal is the one most likely to catch you out.
If you would rather not read statements line by line, Expense Diary can read a statement from a photo, with no bank login, and show you the rows to go through: how that works.
Step 3: check the places subscriptions hide (10 minutes)
Some subscriptions do not appear under their own name on your statement, because they are billed through someone else.
- Your phone’s app store. On an iPhone this is usually under Settings, your name, then Subscriptions. On Android it is usually in the Play Store, under your profile picture, then Payments & subscriptions. Both list active subscriptions and free trials.
- Payment wallets. PayPal and similar services keep a list of automatic payments you have approved, in their settings.
- Shopping and delivery memberships. The big retailers each have a membership page in the account settings.
- Your phone or broadband bill. Extras and add-ons are easy to miss, as are streaming bundles that come with a contract.
- Your email. Search your inbox for words like subscription, renewal, receipt, invoice, trial, your plan and billing. Each confirmation or renewal notice is a lead.
- Other family members’ devices. A subscription taken out on a child’s tablet or a partner’s phone is still on your card.
Step 4: write them all down (5 minutes)
For each subscription, note three things: what it is, what it costs, and how often it is charged. Weekly, monthly, every few months and yearly all count, and the yearly ones are the ones that look cheap and are not.
Put them in the free subscription cost calculator. It turns every one into a cost for a year, adds them up, and shows the monthly and daily equivalent. It works in any currency, and it does not upload or store what you type.
If the total makes you wince, that is normal. Most people guess low, and they guess low because each charge is small. How the numbers add up is in how much your subscriptions really cost a year.
Step 5: ask one question of each (5 minutes)
For each row, ask: would I sign up for this today, at this price?
It is a better question than “do I use it?”, because almost everyone can answer yes to that. The question that matters is whether you would pay now if you were not already paying.
Sort each into one of four piles:
| Pile | What to do |
|---|---|
| Keep | You would sign up today. Move on. |
| Cancel | You would not. Cancel it now, not later. |
| Switch | You want it, but a cheaper plan exists: a yearly plan, a family plan, a plan with adverts, or a bundle you already have. |
| Pause | You use it in bursts. If the service lets you pause or cancel and come back, do that instead of paying all year. |
Look especially for overlaps: two cloud storage plans, two services that play the same music, a streaming service you already get with another service.
Step 6: cancel properly
- Cancel with the company first, in the app or on the website where you signed up. If you subscribed through an app store, cancel there: cancelling the app on your phone does not cancel the subscription.
- Keep the confirmation. Take a screenshot or save the email.
- Check that the charge stops. Look at your next statement. Companies do make mistakes, and some make it hard to cancel.
- Free trials: if you want to try something, put the end date in your calendar the day you start, a few days before it converts.
- If a payment will not stop, your bank or card provider may be able to stop future payments. How this works depends on your country and on the kind of payment, so ask them rather than assuming. Do this after you have tried the company, not instead of it.
Make the list stay true
A one-off audit only lasts until the next free trial. Two habits keep it honest:
- Keep one list, with the renewal date of each subscription, and look at it every few months. A calendar reminder is enough.
- Write the cancel date as soon as you start a trial.
Keeping the list in Expense Diary
Expense Diary has a Subscriptions view in the Bills tab. You add each subscription once, with its price and how often it renews, and the app keeps the yearly total, shows a split by group and lists each one with its next renewal date. Because a subscription is also a bill, it appears on the month’s calendar and is held back from your safe-to-spend figure until it is paid. If a subscription has not been paid for a while, the app asks whether it is still going, which helps when a card expires or you cancel and forget to tell the app.
Everything is kept on your phone, with no account and no bank login. Expense Diary is free on Google Play, and the full list of ways to get it is at brightscalelabs.com/apps. Subscription tracking is part of the free version.