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How many subscriptions do you actually have? You need to do a budget audit to track your subscriptions and find out.
Have you lost track of your subscriptions*? You think you know how many you have, but it could be a surprise when you actually look into it.
It’s important to keep track of everything. And I mean everything. This isn’t always that easy, which is why a regular budget audit is essential. Take your time to go through all your accounts, including the PayPal one that you have for anything there!
You have more than Netflix
Right now, you probably think you have a couple of subscriptions. You know you have Netflix, and you probably remember Spotify. What about Amazon Prime? Hulu or Crave? That fitness box that you get every quarter?
The quarterly and yearly subscriptions are the ones that you’ll forget the most. Trust me; I’ve done it. I wasn’t expecting a payment to go out one month and suddenly got a “payment has been declined” email. It was because I’d changed my credit card and completely forgot about a subscription. Well, I canceled that subscription!
When you do your budget audit* to track your subscriptions, you’ll find out just how many you have. Now it’s time to see what you really need to keep.
Get ruthless after you track your subscriptions
You don’t need everything. The benefit of the 30-day rolling contracts is that you don’t have to keep the subscriptions every single month. There are some that I will pick up for a couple of months to watch something and then cancel. I’ve just done it with DAZN for the Six Nations rugby.
Get ruthless with your subscriptions when it comes to saving money. If you haven’t used something in a month or two, you don’t need it. Cancel and then get it again when you definitely do need it.
The only subscription I keep at all times is Amazon Prime. I run a blog that is all about Amazon and Prime Video so I need it for work, but also, I do a lot of shopping on Amazon and take advantage of the free shipping a lot. It’s the only one I’m guaranteed to use every single week.
How to track your subscriptions
When you’re doing your budget audit, you can take your time to go through each of the subscriptions* connected to each of your accounts. You’ll want to go back 12 months for each of your accounts if you don’t regularly track things to catch all those quarterly and yearly payments.
There is an easier way, though. Some online banking apps will categorize your payments. My RBC account does, and I can see where I’m spending my money. This is only good for each individual month, though. It also doesn’t keep track of my PayPal, which I can sometimes forget about.
If you don’t want to keep track monthly—or you don’t have to for work purposes—you’ll want an app to manage it all. There are a couple of apps that come highly recommended by people I know who use them. I haven’t tried them personally, though, and these are not affiliate links.
You could try TrackMySubs or Rocket Money.
I track everything with a spreadsheet. I just find it easier for managing things for my business and I can see where I’m spending money and where I’m not. Things are categorized in a way that makes sense in my head, even though someone else looking at it may not understand it all.
MORE: 5 top tips to stick to a budget in 2024
Need help to track your subscriptions? Get in touch today and let me help!
