How do you stay afloat in the subscription economy?

I frequently cancel subscriptions to services I don't use often and just re-subscribe when I want them again. I've been on and off spotify, netflix, and amazon prime, and a few subscription based games quite a few times at this point.

The only things I pay for on a subscription basis at the moment is $11 a month for a subscription-based game and $25 a month to a patreon so that I can read their weekly chapter early. I could drop the latter if I was willing to go a few weeks without updates, but I'm too invested in the current point of the story and do not yet mind the cost.

I also don't think people spending $200 a month on subscriptions is out of the norm, considering most people I know from the generation above mine pay that just for their cable bill. That being said, I still think it's crazy to spend that kind of money for something like cable.

To be honest, this just reads like a post from /r/personalfinance from someone who is not good at managing their money. I don't know how much your monthly expenses cut into your income, but I would guess noticeably so if you are making this post.

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EDIT

I realized I missed a few other things I pay for since I don't think of them as subscriptions, even if they are. I pay whatever it costs to own 5 domain names and a digitalocean droplet.

Staying afloat makes it sound like it's somehow overwhelming and I don't think that it is. There's a service - you can probably afford it; if you can't afford it, you can almost certainly go without it. Make up your mind about whether it's worth it and move on mentally, it's really not a big deal either way.

The problem I have with some subscriptions (not all) is that you don’t get to use the app or service if you don’t pay. All your previous payments don’t matter at all. I also hate SaaS subscriptions that put something on the cloud just to turn it into a subscription instead of a standalone application license sale. There are many notorious names that use dark patterns and willfully deceiving marketing. Password managers, analytics and other services that charge by page views, etc., are eye gouging, IMO.

I also believe that subscriptions essentially make the developers a bit more lazier because there would always be a chunk of customers who’d continue paying because they haven’t bothered to cancel a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Compare this to having to entice people to buy an upgrade license, where the value decision in buying or not buying lies with the buyer. Subscriptions tend to invert the power equation in favor of sellers for little benefit to the buyers (I’m not saying all subscriptions are like this). This is what makes people hate them, because they know intuitively that they’re being scammed.

I try to be extremely resistant to subscriptions. I only have Amazon Prime (not because of video, just for free shipping) and Spotify Family (with 5 people on it, it's acceptable, although it's still annoying and expensive).

I don't subscribe to any video streaming service; Youtube is quite usable with uBlock in a browser (I don't even have a TV anyway).

Software wise, Adobe Creative Suite pricing is predatory; I just use Affinity and am very happy with it (I do have a license for Lightroom 6 which is fine for my needs). I have a copy of Office 2003 which is perfect (and pre-ribbon!) I manage todos on Workflowy which is free and fits how I think perfectly; if it ever went away I could probably do the same in a text file.

When it was free (twelve years ago?) I did use Instapaper, but found that I almost never came back to an article on a Kindle or other device; "Reader mode" is available on most browsers and lets you read with no distractions directly.

I think it's still possible to avoid all the subscription traps and random offerings, but I agree it's all going the wrong way.

Possibly, but do you actually need any of that stuff?

Some friends only listen to music on youtube or free on spotify (with ads). Personally I have apple music, after going through 3 months free trial of all the services I stuck with it and for £10/month it's less than I used to spend on CDs. I would drop it tomorrow if I needed the money.

The only other thing I subscribe to is Netflix, which is £5.99 and my kids watch a lot on it. I've had disney in the past, but it doesn't get watched. Again I would drop netflix if I wasn't watching it. There's already more free stuff on youtube or bbc iplayer than I could ever watch.

My wife and I have been dealing with this conundrum for the last few months. At the end of 2021, we felt like we were drowning in subscriptions. We were subscribed to the following services: Spotify, Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Paramount+, Headspace, Peloton, and Adobe Creative Cloud. We're in the process of purchasing a home, so it was sort of a gut punch to go through our expenses and realize we were easily spending $150+ / month on subscriptions.

We've drastically cut back; the only subscriptions we pay for at the moment are HBO (we're finishing up a show and will cancel that when we're done) and Peloton (keeping this). The challenge for us has really been finding suitable alternatives that are either free, or involve one-time purchase.

Spotify has been replaced by NPR's music discovery channel and purchasing some of our favorite albums on the iTunes Store. Headspace has been replaced by guided meditation videos on Youtube. Our (my) Adobe CC usage has been replaced by purchasing Final Cut Pro X (lifetime license) and using Darktable (FOSS).

Most services have reasonable alternatives that you can either purchase outright or use for free.

I’ve started using the library a lot. They have multiple racks of TV shows that I paid hundreds in subscriptions to watch in the past. For example, I want to watch Yellowstone next. I checked out the DVDs for Season 1 rather than pay for Paramount+. Sure, I have to wait sometimes for popular stuff, but I am so inundated with content (even from just the library!) that I have no problem keeping myself entertained while I wait.

If a service is useful but you're short on money, write them a polite note, and explain the situation and how much you would be able to pay. A good chunk of smaller companies will accommodate you. Maybe even the occasional big one.

However, it's probably time to clean up, curb your appetite, and try to spend less time inside your computer/phone, or at least in the consumerist corner of the internet.

To add some anecdata, I recently have been sucked into much labor and work in the physical world and have had much less time to spend at the computer. The mental difference from this "digital detox" has been noticeable and eye opening. I'm exposed to much less anger and hate (news + social media) and I don't waste a ton of time getting sucked into random walks of knowledge seeking and trivia.

> I really don't think it's crazy to think a person could spend $200/mo+ on recurring subscriptions.

It's not, looking at my budget I'm at about $400/mo. This includes monthly subscriptions and yearly (I set aside 1/12th every month).

A few of my monthly: YouTube, Spotify, Github, Netflix, Apple/Google storage, Dropbox, VPN, DO/Hetzner/AWS hosting, Backblaze, Zoom, Apple Care, handful of Patreons

A few of my yearly/quarterly: Game Pass, Audible, Day One, Font Awesome, YNAB, IDEA, Apple Dev, Ring, Drafts, 1Password

Shoutout to YNAB (https://www.youneedabudget.com/), it's a great tool for being able to easily track/manage your subscriptions (It's a budgeting tool). When I first set it up I was able to purge a number of things I had forgotten about that I was paying for.

Maybe it's just me, but personally I simply don't use saas services unless I really have to or very much like to use it regularly.

For the business (I run a small consultancy) the story is different though. It pays for several services on a monthly basis somewhere between 50 and 100€ / month, if they provide value.

The business can afford it and if a service helps the business paying for it is just fair.

I can understand both sides of the equation. I have been getting weary of spending a whole lot on subscriptions on things that don't need be subscriptions.

However, as a developer of small desktop application (which doesn't have recurring costs), I do want to enable subscription to continue to support the application. I still haven't because I'm torn as a user as well as developer. Of course, there is the fear of angering the existing users.

I think people will have to vote with their wallets to the things that they need. If a developer can't pay the bills, the application will be mothballed eventually.

First, ruthless pruning.

Second, subscription rotation. My family wants to watch the Battlebots season. We have subscribed to Discovery+ since that's the only place it is. While it's on Discovery+, we're catching up on the other shows we're interested in. We will be cancelling our subscription when we're done. Perhaps some other thing will pop up, perhaps not. Oh, hey, that reminds me, now that the Superbowl is done, I'm done with Peacock... {click click click} OK, that's cancelled. (Seriously. Literally just cancelled it because you reminded me of it.)

Third, some things I just won't subscribe to. I've been building my MP3 collection since I got my first CD in something like 1995. I've never gone subscription and at this point I almost can't, in the sense that I would lose too much. Lately I've been building up my Plex system rather than get too stuck on movie streaming. It's nominally more expensive, even, but it's mine, and I'm in full control of the cost rather than a monthly subscription.

The best way to avoid being trapped (or feeling trapped) by a service is to never start using it. My plan for the "metaverse", for instance, is to not. Consequently, I will never face a choice between leaving them in disgust but losing all my friends and high scores and purchased content and all the other stuff I didn't actually own, or feeling forced to compromise my principles and stay on a service that takes my money and does things I don't like with it.

I selectively break this rule but only for stuff that I know in advance I don't care if I lose. We've purchased some video from Amazon Video, but I only do that for stuff I am very confident we're only going to watch once. I only subscribe to things I know I don't care if I lose, because it isn't even just the control aspect. Something like "Oku", I don't know what that is, I've never heard of it, will it even be there in six months? Will the feature you love get "upgraded" out of existence? I just don't trust these things, and it's not because I'm just a generic old man shouting at clouds to get off my lawn, it's from experience. I've outlasted a lot of these services already. I've lost track of the amount of "content" I've added to my "watch later" list only for it not to be there when I'm ready. I'd rather just own things I can stick on my automatically-backed-up partition and be done with it.

For me, I watch a lot of the same movies frequently, so I buy as much of my movies as possible on physical media. Eventually, I'll have a collection of everything I've ever liked, and I can do $3.99 rents online of anything I'm curious about. If I like it, I'll buy it physically and add it to the collection. I know it's not great if you want to watch movies on your iPad, but I don't want to watch movies on my iPad, that's what a TV is for.

It takes space, but the long term savings are substantial. It especially helps with Blu-rays being relatively cheap on eBay and at thrift stores in my area (I'm averaging $7-$8 per film, way cheaper than buying an online digital version and I physically own it, it just takes patience). I got on the Blu-ray train because it's cheaper than 4K Blu-Ray, but looks way better than DVD on a 4K TV, a nice middle ground. Plus you can find players at thrift stores and often repair them by cleaning the laser assembly for $10 or so.

For music... sorry, Apple Music. I don't have many CDs yet, and music is something I'm more interested in discovering new tracks for than movies.

For me the annoyance is a subscription model as the default, when other models would make more sense and be more palatable.

E.g.

My calorie counting app (which shall remain nameless, since that's not the point) has a freemium model, where a subscription will grant you access to a bunch of extra metrics, recipes, and ability to store "meals", etc.

This doesnt sound too unreasonable, until you realise they ask for £10/month, on the basis that they're offering "hundreds of extra stuff", but in fact I would probably only need, like, 2 or 3 of those extra features, max.

I would have happily paid a couple of fivers for those 2-3 features as permanent addons, (including something like "recipe update packs", which in principle isn't too different from a subscription model) but the idea that I'm expected to pay the same amount to only use them for a month makes me feel cheated. As if my stuff will be kept hostage after I cave once. So I haven't left the freemium version yet, and it's unlikely I ever will. It's fairly easy to work around the annoyances anyway.

Just don't subscribe if the value isn't worth it, and there are plenty of services available subscription free.

I watch a lot of youtube videos and I have never been tempted by the $12 a month premium service. Sure, I've probably consumed some advertisements in between videos, but that's been worth it to me for the amount of youtube content I've enjoyed.

A service I might find more worth paying for is Spotify, since there is value in the easy access, centralization of all the artists, etc. But I don't always listen to a lot of music, only sometimes. So maybe if I know I'm working a job where I can listen to music in the background it's worth the cost that month to enjoy it ad free, but if I'm not going to be stuck working the warehouse I might not be listening to music and not spend the money on it.

I'm actually increasing what I'm subscribed to. Added economist, financial times, spotify and protonmail recently.

I'm not actively opposed to the model. Unless they try to squeeze more money out of you later and while progressively make the product worse (Looking at you lastpass).

Like any purchase its about making thoughtful decisions.

I do draw the line at two video streaming services. If its not on there then I reach for the eyepatch. I'm not paying half a dozen services just cause the industry is a fragmented mess with everyone and their dog trying to build their own walled garden.

>Part of me thinks this could be a “power user” problem,

I've been migrating more stuff to self-hosting. e.g. My notes live on a gitlab instance on home server

> I really don't think it's crazy to think a person could spend $200/mo+ on recurring subscriptions.

That does seem pretty crazy to me.

I use Pocketsmith to track expenses, assets, liabilities, make financial projections, etc. I have a sub-category of "Misc" called "Digital Subscriptions" that I put all subscriptions under regardless of whether or not they are cloud services, media streaming services, apps, or other. I view them as a kind of virus that will grow if left unchecked. Every so often my wife and I go and see if we're paying more than we think is necessary for digital subscriptions. Then we cancel. This way we've hit a kind of stasis.

That's a very important topic! I try to buy discounted/yearly stuff and only the most necessary. Thinking about it, I have spotify, protonmail, netflix, swapfiets (a bike subscription), PSN, domains, headspace, welltory. Quite a lot. I already cancelled endel because it's just not worth it. I think they are accepting that most people won't subscribe, but it's enough if a portion of active users pay more. I think this will solve itself somehow. You already see an uptick in movie piracy and it will continue I guess.

Set a monthly budget for non essential subscriptions, whatever you think you can afford. If you hit the budget, and you want a new subscription, then that means you have to cancel something else.

Never auto-renew by default.

Any time I sign up for something, I only sign up for a month and I immediately turn off auto-renew. If I miss it at the end of the month, I can sign up again, but usually I won't. If I get through another month, I'll consider a year if its a much better deal, but usually I won't.

The moment I see dark patterns in a subscription model (e.g., I lose my data if my subscription lapses, I have to phone in to cancel), I cancel and don't look back, even if I like the service otherwise.

I just create an annual budget of what I'm willing to pay for "luxury" services. I also try to share services I have with friends who have other services.

Parents have Netflix they share with me, and I have Amazon Prime that I share with them. I have HBO Max that I share with a friend who shares back his Disney+. My boyfriend has Spotify Family, and I share my Amazon Prime login with him. Everyone here benefits out of this.

So that gives me five services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, and Spotify) for the cost of only two (Amazon Prime and HBO Max).

To keep things from going wild, we don't share the passwords, we log into the accounts for each other. This prevents anyone from sharing the account login and effectively locking the account owner out from being able to use the service.

I'm well aware that sharing the services is a violation of the TOS, but people do it regardless and everyone knows that's what people do.

I also cut my phone bill down to $24-30/mo by dumping unlimited data and just paying for what I use (typically 200-300MB). Wifi is everywhere, I'm not a social media addict, and when I'm not around wifi, it's usually because I'm shopping, with friends, or driving. Unlimited data is nice, but I found it so easy to cut away from.

Subscriptions are why I'm torn on the whole Apple Payment system.

On one hand, I disagree with the lost of liberty, the inability to install what I want without Apple approving everything (and taking a huge cut).

On the other hand, I've had so many subscriptions that I forgot, or that make it "hard"to unsubscribe.

That's why I now try to subscribe through Apple whenever I can so that I can have a single view of my subscriptions, when there trial end, etc.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I recognize there is a lower bound to subscription fees; If you're paying the standard Stripe-esque fees of $.30 + 2.9%, it's probably not really feasible to charge anything much lower than a couple bucks per month.

A lot of DIY. Self-hosting. Self-design. It gives me more insight for problems my clients may have, what is happening on the servers, etc.

Caveat: I come from the "small business as client" world, so scaling is not much of a concern for my bread and butter.

I don't worry about subscriptions too much. My basic personal finance strategy is to spend more time worrying about the big stuff (where I live, what car I drive, my job/income) and not worry about the little things. I just checked YNAB and I spend about $100-200/month on "monthly internet services" that's basically what my parents spent on their monthly cable bill when I was a child and they only ever used 10 channels.

I think you should prune services you don't use a handful of times a year, but other than that don't stress about something that costs less than Chipotle, even if it is recurring.

I think the current state of things is pretty sad. I only subscribe when I use the service a lot, I would like to subscribe to more services (to avoid being the product) but they are usually priced way too high. Take worflowy for example, I use it, free tier is enough for me, I like the service but is is far from critical to me. I would pay for it but maybe 10 USD per year would be my limit. There are a lot of services like that that wants 5 USD per month or something ridiculous. I think the real problem here is the cost of payments, but I haven't researched this.

I keep a spreadsheet of subscription services. Mostly so that I don't forget which ones I am paying. I have a column where I automatically multiply the monthly cost of a service by 12, so I can see how much it costs me over time. That way I can ask myself whether a $10/month service is giving me $120 a year in value.

An improvement to this would be a date for the start of the subscription, and a running tally of how much it's cost in total: was this service worth the $850 it's cost me already?

I don’t have any digital subscription. Any, I’m not kidding. My only automatically recurring expenses are rent, phone/internet plan and electric bill. I can’t say my life has been impacted at all and I am certainly not a hermit or anything like that. My girlfriend and I live completely normal lives in a major US city. Maybe set a hard line like this for a year and evaluate your level of comfort? Most of the stuff is just junk, it’s very easy to get tempted.

Join Telegram for some dedicated channels and private plex servers served with torrents. Cheaper and better in the long term. Subscription economy has gone for the worse

Your two realities are wrong.

1. You are not responsible if something's business model causes it to fail. 2. Nothing deserves compensation. There is no inherent right to earn a living.

One of the joys of capitalism is that there is a competitive marketplace. Each competitor is trying to beat the others. Sometimes on service and quality - but usually on price. If a VC is willing to subsidise something to undercut the competitors - take advantage of that.

So, sign up to an education provider and get a student discount. Rotate though your family members to keep getting new customer offers. Call up to cancel and see if they'll offer you a better deal. Find the offers which let you refer friends to get discounts. Switch to competitors.

But, most of all, ask if you are really getting £X worth of value from the subscription. If not, dump it.

Having a server has saved me a tremendous amount of money. Here are a few things I self host that would normally cost money

-Terabytes of storage

-Password manager

-Streaming service (jellyfin)

-Home automation (if I remember correctly some home automation services have a fee)

-Music streaming

-Backups

-Email

-Website saver (wallabag)

Not to mention how much I've learned while managing the thing. I truly think everyone who can should have a server these days. We have zero subscriptions for any internet service and I wouldn't have it any other way

i spend 0$ a month on subscriptions. except for digital ocean. and some domain names.

i have a high bar, and the content and offerings of all these services just doesnt justify the expense. not to mention i work 8h a day 6 days a week.

i get bored watching movies/tv, at least the stuff they are making nowadays. i need intellectual stimulation, and so i do my hobbies instead in my free time.

I tend to manage them fairly actively apart from some essentials (hosting, email, Spotify, iCloud). If you're not using a service then pause it and re-subscribe when you need it. That's generally what I do, I also cull the non-essential ones if I know I don't have a new project/client in the pipeline or am taking some time off.

One trick for us is to minimize streaming platforms. We keep HBO for Sesame Street and periodically sign up for other services when there is something specific we want to watch but we always cancel immediately so we are only ever paying for a month at a time.

In theory we’ll notice it expire if there’s something we want to keep watching but it never happens.

I subscribe to one UK magazine, mailed monthly to NZ. That's my only subscription. I buy music from Bandcamp, HDTracks and occasionally CD. I buy boxed set DVDs. I run my own media server.

My dev business does have three subscriptions: PHPStorm, Browserstack and an online accounting package. All three will be cancelled when I exit the business.

> Are we slowly drowning in subscriptions?

Depends on how much of a minimalist you are. Now and then I go on a 'subscription spree' depending on how much disposable income I have at any given moment, then nuke all the subscriptions at the end of the year. I keep my domains renewed however, and that's my only real commitment.

I think I only have three subscriptions at the moment... Prime, Chewy, and a news commentary streaming site I like. That's pretty much it, not very expensive. Everything else is available to me by other means if I'm willing to pay one-off fees or just step outside my house. I'm okay with this.

I have a budget per month for media subscriptions ($30) and I just cycle through services.

For example, I want to see the new season of Curb and some movies, so I got HBO max for a month. Last month, I had Netflix to catch up on some Queer Eye and other shows.

I've been using YT premium since it came out, and really enjoy that service.

I think, Companies providing this monthly(recurring) subscription model would have to eventually move to "pay for use" sort of model. So even if I have a Netflix Subscription but do not watch any movie, I do not actually pay anything.

I would still pre-pay but it will be adjusted against my usage only.

I wonder would people want to bundle their subscriptions. For example you could bundle them so they synergize with each other and the same time reduce cost for consumer e.g. News bundle(NYT, WSJ etc.), Gaming bundle(WoW, PCGamer, chess.com), Entertainment bundle(Spotify, Netfix, Disney+) etc.

Definitely a problem and really the only practical solution is discipline and tracking.

Sooner or later most of this stuff will be aggregated into a meta-service, aka return of the "virtual department store". There's a reason those were successful.

I’ve found self hosted alternatives to a lot of services I’d need to pay for. I run everything on a raspberry pi k8s cluster that probably costed around $400 to build. It’s paid for itself already.

Now if only I could convince my wife that we don’t need Netflix….

I loved owning my music, and would pay to make Spotify et al just go away.

In this household, we mostly ignore most subscription services, and use public services where applicable.

Some services, primarily Spotify, lack public alternatives, but fortunately Spotify does have a family plan.

I pay for something if I use it frequently. If I don't use it frequently, I cancel or don't sign up in the first place.

I increased my own subscription price.

I use virtual credit cards to manage and turn off/on subscriptions

Using GNU/Linux. Rejecting most tech even if it is “inconvenient” for me. Use cash only except when absolutely required. Use of torrents.

I torrent or use my in-laws' accounts. The only things I pay for myself is a seedbox and amc stubs a-list so I can see (effectively) unlimited movies in theaters. I can't imagine spending more than a couple bucks on media subscriptions, I only pay for a-list because I really enjoy going to the theaters and the monthly costs evens out with a single dolby cinema or imax movie. To me that's worth it because I can't replicate that anywhere else.

Edit: Don't misunderstand, for the many years before I had a seedbox (I've only had it for a year), I still didn't subscribe to things. Companies are very skilled at making you think you need things that you don't, and you don't need subscriptions. With youtube alone I could probably get all the digital entertainment I could want