Every few months, audit your subscriptions against your card and bank statements and your phone’s app store, and cancel anything you haven’t used since the last check. Recurring charges keep billing whether or not you remember them. Make your first audit cover a full year, since annual renewals show up only once.
Most people underestimate what their subscriptions cost. In a 2022 C+R Research survey of 1,000 consumers, respondents estimated they spent $86 a month on subscriptions, but their itemized total averaged $219. Forty-two percent said they were still paying for a service they had stopped using and forgotten about.
Subscriptions are built to run in the background. They bill on autopay, a $10 charge doesn’t stand out on a long statement, and some arrive under a name you won’t recognize. App Store charges show up as apple.com/bill, a label Apple uses for apps, subscriptions, and other purchases, so the statement doesn’t say which app you’re paying for. Deleting an app doesn’t help either. Google warns that uninstalling an app won’t cancel its subscription.
Run your first audit on a full year of card and bank statements, because annual plans bill only once. List every recurring charge with its price and renewal date. Then check the lists your statements hide. On an iPhone, go to Settings, tap your name, then tap Subscriptions. On Android, open the Subscriptions page in the Google Play Store.
For each line, ask when you last used it. Cancel anything you haven’t touched since the last audit, and put every annual renewal on your calendar a week before it bills. Handle free trials the same way. Apple says to cancel at least 24 hours before a trial ends if you don’t want it to renew.
After the first pass, each audit only needs the statements since the last one. Doing it every few months caps how long a forgotten monthly charge can run, so schedule the next audit before you close this one.
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