How I found $432 in unwanted subscriptions in 5 steps
No extra app downloads necessary.
Hi there, my friend.
The average American spends $924 per year on subscription services. What about you?
I don’t know exactly, but I would guess that I spend more than that. However, because of one simple move I made over the holiday break, that number should be a little smaller going forward.
Here’s what I did…
I logged into my various checking accounts and credit card accounts.
For each account, I downloaded a spreadsheet with all of my transactions on that account for 2025. (Most any bank or credit card issuer will have something similar available.)
When I opened the spreadsheet, I sorted it by the column that described the transaction. In most cases, the column was called “Description,” but different financial institutions may have them labeled differently in these downloads.
Once sorted, I scanned through the document to find any recurring transactions. For example, for a monthly subscription, you’d likely have 12 transactions with similar descriptions and dollar amounts. With the file sorted by description, those subscriptions should easily stand out, even in a list of dozens or even hundreds of transactions.
In most cases, when I came across a recurring subscription, I glanced at the transactions and moved on. Most of my subscriptions are valuable to me, so there’s nothing to be done. However, two specific cases that I found gave me pause, so I made a note to review them after I finished looking through my transaction lists.
Ultimately, I chose to cancel both of the subscriptions — one for a fitness app membership at $7.99 a month and one for a digital-news subscription at $27.99 per month — and the decisions were pretty easy. The first, I didn’t realize I hadn’t canceled. The second, I didn’t realize just how much I was actually paying.
That’s a savings of about $36 per month or $432 per year, just for downloading, sorting and spending a couple of minutes with a spreadsheet. And it is something that anyone can do.
You don’t need to download some app to find all of these subscriptions. Those tools can be really useful, for sure, but you also likely to have to allow them access to some of your personal accounts in order for them to do their thing. My method requires a little more legwork (though really not much), but it is also far more private.
If you don’t want to cancel, this can still save you money
I had to cancel the digital-news membership over the phone, which was irritating. However, when I called to cancel, the customer service representative told me that if I chose not to cancel, they could lower my monthly subscription. I believe they said they could lower it to $19.99 per month.
If I had had any interest in keeping the subscription, that very well might have swayed me. That’s about $8 a month or nearly $100 a year — not life-changing money, for sure, but not nothing either — but I simply had no interest in keeping the subscription at any price, so it didn’t matter.
What does matter, though, is that it provided me further proof of what I’ve said a million times at “Ask, Save, Earn” or in my book or in interviews: These types of deals are out there to be had, and often you just have to ask.
Until next time!
Matt