Wondering where all of your money is going each month? Your subscriptions may be bleeding your budget dry.
About half of American adults (47%) say they’re looking to make a financial resolution for 2024, according to a December WalletHub survey. And if trimming some subscriptions is one area where you’re looking to cut spending in the new year, then here’s how to decide which ones to keep and which ones to cancel.
Ask yourself this one question: How often do you actually use the service?
In other words, are you regularly bingeing shows or watching movies on Netflix
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Hulu or Disney+
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? Do you do all of your grocery shopping at Costco
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? Is Spotify streaming the podcasts and tunes that are the soundtrack to your life? Or are you automatically paying for services month over month that you never log into anymore?
“Examine each subscription cost closely and consider whether you are getting your money’s worth from the service,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe told MarketWatch. “If you don’t use the service frequently, put the subscription on hold or cancel it altogether. In most cases, you can restart the subscription later if you need to use the service again.”
Here are some more easy ways to save on the subscriptions that you want to keep.
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Take advantage of free trials – and canceling and restarting subscriptions as needed. Committing to an Amazon Prime
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membership sound daunting? New members can sign up for a free 30-day trial. Just remember to set a calendar alert to remind you to opt out of the membership before that 30 days is up if you decide it’s not for you. But you can also game the system this way, by not being afraid to cancel subscriptions when you don’t need them. So if you’re a soccer fan and subscribe to Comcast’s Peacock to watch the Premier League, for example, then consider only subscribing during the season to catch the matches you want, and then save money by canceling during the off season. - Bundle up when possible. Paying for a Disney+ subscription and a Hulu subscription independently costs about $32. But now a Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs approximately $20 with no ads. College students can score with a Spotify + Hulu + Showtime bundle for just $5.99 a month (and a free one-month trial) which saves them about $13 a month.
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Suffer through commercials. For streaming services, opt for the ad-tier plans with commercials as another way to cut costs. Netflix with ads starts at about $7 a month, versus paying between $15.49 and $22.99 to stream without commercial interruptions. Or you can listen to Spotify
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for free without ads, although you’ll have limited control with what you’re listening too – such as only being able to skip six tracks an hour, versus unlimited skips with a Spotify Premium account for $11 a month and up. - Consider paying annually instead of monthly. While paying for the year can be a lot of money up front, such as $139 for Amazon for 12 months, these annual plans are almost always less expensive in the long run. Amazon’s monthly rate is $15 which comes out to $180 for the year, or $41 more. Some of your go-to subscriptions might be free with other services. For example: the $78 cost of TSA Precheck is included with some credit cards, and one year of Disney+ is included with some Verizon plans. And Sesame’s medical wellness service is included with a Costco membership.
So which monthly subscriptions do people say are worth it?
Thousands of people on Reddit have been sharing their recommendations this week. Here are some of the most popular:
For film buffs, a monthly subscription to a heater chain can provide good value on films and concessions. One avid moviegoer noted they can see up to 12 films a month for a price of less than $2 a ticket at their local theater chain.
See also: How to recover from your holiday-spending hangover in the new year
Several Reddit users also praised Spotify as a great value, especially since the Swedish music-streaming company has added audiobooks and podcasts to its platform. Spotify’s Premium plans start at $10.99 a month.
Other digital subscriptions there were routinely cited as good values in the Reddit thread included Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited ($11.99) for bookworms, Hulu ($7.99 with ads), Microsoft’s Game Pass ($9.99) for videogame buffs and YouTube Premium ($13.99).
Another popular subscription that users said has great value, which is also billed annually instead of monthly, was a Costco membership. It starts at $60 a year and comes with access to the wholesaler’s warehouses and online stores for groceries, toiletries, cleaning products, furniture — and even gold bars.
Yet at least one in four people in WalletHub’s survey said they plan to tighten their purse strings in 2024 to save more money.
“Despite consumer confidence ticking up in recent months, we’re likely to see consumers batten down the hatches in 2024 and pull back on spending,” Will McDonough, Chairman of financial services company Corestone Capital, told MarketWatch.
But people will probably still hold onto their favorite subscriptions, McDonough added. .
Consumers will stay loyal to Amazon Prime, Costco and Netflix, since they provide “fast service, superior content and all at a relative financial deal,” he said. But he noted that people will also probably be more selective about curating which ones they keep, and “forgo duplicative apps for music and streaming, switch to the cheaper gym membership and eliminate extra spending on services like cleaners.”
See also: Financial resolutions for the new year? Retirees want to pay off credit-card debt.
