I cancelled these 10 subscriptions and saved almost $150 a month without feeling a difference
It's a tale as old as time: you sign up for a free trial, forget about it completely, and three months later, you're staring at your credit card bill and wondering why it's higher than usual.
Ignorance is bliss — right up until you check your bank account. It turns out (I'm speaking from experience), many people wildly underestimate how many subscriptions they actually have
So I did a little financial housekeeping and cancelled a handful of things. The result? I saved about $150 a month and, surprisingly, did not feel deprived in the slightest.
These things may be worth it for you, but here are 10 subscriptions that I cancelled without feeling the difference.
Spotify premium: $10.99/month (individual plan)
Spotify Premium is nice. No ads. Unlimited skips. Downloaded music. Living like a princess.
But the free version works too. Yes, there are ads. Yes, it only allows six song skips per hour. But if you're mostly listening in the car or while walking, it's survivable. (Especially if you romanticize a part of your childhood when all we had to work with was an iPod Shuffle). Kind of nostalgic when you think of it that way...
I briefly cancelled this during my subscription purge and realized something shocking: the occasional 30-second ad did not ruin my life. (It almost did. But it didn't). Growth.
Uber One: $9.99/month
This one gets the best of us. You've had a long day and are starving. You're ordering your favourite pho. The Uber One pop-up appears while you're trying to check out. You click it accidentally (you were just trying to get through to the order screen faster).
Congratulations. You now have a monthly membership. Newsflash: they are still charging you.
ChatGPT plus: $27/month
I had to get this subscription for a "medical blog writing" job once, which clearly failed to believe in the power of human content, human beings, etc. I digress. As a writer, I hate the whole issue of ChatGPT — it's a real cutting off your nose to spite your face situation.
But I know a lot of you are living it and loving it. So I'll just say this: the basic model is perfectly fine. Use your brain to fact-check.
Point two: sure, premium artificial intelligence is impressive. Do you know what else is impressive? Reading a book. Moving on.
Amazon prime: $10.50/month
This is one of my favourites.
Cancelling Prime forces you to do radical, healthy things like waiting more than 24 hours for a package (they say patience is a virtue for a reason) or walking into an actual store and buying something in person (support your local businesses).
Speaking to real people, leaving the house, touching grass... It's strange at first, but I promise you'll survive.
(Also, many orders over $35 still ship free anyway, which makes the urgency of two-day shipping feel less necessary).
NordVPN: $16.29/month
You know the exact moment you signed up for this. You were on vacation in Europe. Or maybe the States. You got back to your Airbnb early and needed to watch your show from home. You subscribed to a VPN. Problem solved.
Except now you're back in Canada, and that charge is still quietly appearing every month while you forget the password.
Streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, Crave, Apple TV+): $10–$23 each/month
These are tricky because, realistically, most of us are keeping at least one. But having all of them simultaneously? That's where things start to spiral a bit. Individually, they don't seem bad. Together, they quietly become a $60–$80 monthly bill.
The solution isn't necessarily cancelling all of them. It's rotating, bundling, (or, my personal illegal favourite — sharing passwords with friends so we all only have to pay for one but have access to everything). Streaming loyalty is not required.
iCloud storage: $12.99/month for 2TB
Do you really need 2 terabytes of extra phone storage? Or do you just have 10,000 nearly identical photos of sunsets and are lazy about deleting old iMessages?
A reminder (to myself): you can back up your phone to a hard drive. You can delete things. You most likely won't even notice having fewer videos from Pemberton Music Festival in 2014.
Audible: $14.95/month
For a brief, very confused moment, I thought I could be someone who listened to audiobooks while walking. Maybe I'd be able to actually get through the back half of Sapiens if someone spoke it aloud to me... right? Wrong.
I tried it once and hated it. Naturally, I also forgot to cancel the subscription.
This take could be a little harsh (I know plenty of people love audiobooks), but personally, I'll stick with reading books instead of listening to them. Just how God intended.
The mystery Apple charge: $11.65/month
I would bet my life savings (which evidently isn't much after going through all these subscriptions) that at least 75% of people reading this have a random monthly Apple charge they have never investigated.
Every month it appears. Every month you think, I should really figure out what that is. And every month you don't. Today is the day.
Wix: $24/month
Freelancers, creatives, and entrepreneurs know this one well. At some point you decided to build your own website. You spent fourteen hours choosing fonts and colours. The layout never quite worked (because the free trial is terrible), so in a fit of frustration, you paid for an upgraded plan.
Then, you forgot about it completely. It has never gotten you a job lead. But the platform is still happily charging you every month nonetheless.
After trimming these subscriptions, I ended up saving around $150 a month.
That's $1,800 a year.
Which, coincidentally, is exactly enough money to spend on things that actually matter — like an overpriced matcha, a good dinner with friends, or that dress you've been eyeing at Reformation. You're welcome.
The views expressed in this Opinion article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.
