First off, I recognize the irony of me complaining about subscriptions when I have a Patreon page that offers subscriptions. I appreciate the support folks throw me, and I always will. I don’t think I can help though complaining about my own struggles with subscription services. I think this revolution we’ve gone through where things aren’t sold but are instead rented is horrendous and may just ruin the world as we know it.

What I Subscribe To⌗

Let’s look at what I actually pay for.

  • Claude - $20/month
  • Audible - $14.95/month
  • Fireside (for podcast hosting) - $19/month
  • YouTube Premium (family plan) - $22.99/month
  • Visible (Phone) - $25/month
  • Disney+ bundle - $16.99/month
  • Paramount+ - $12.99/month
  • YouTube TV - $84/month
  • Facer (WatchOS Faces) - $5/month
  • Amazon Prime - $8/month
  • Jitsi/Nextcloud hosting - $30/month
  • Various FOSS Related Support (creators and developers) - $10/month
  • Kindle Unlimited - $12/month
  • Apple iCloud Storage - $3/month

And that’s just the stuff that I pay for by the month. I also have several yearly subscriptions including Proton Unlimited, Deezer, Mullvad VPN, LanguageTool, Borg, PikaPods, and maybe a few more. That adds on several hundred dollars a year to the already absurd monthly bill. Adding the monthly stuff up, I pay $270.93 per month. I’ll be honest with you guys, I had no clue it was that bad until right now. I’m kind of in shock. I don’t want to spend that much money. Some of this shit has got to go.

Cutting Back Is Hard⌗

But it’s not as if I don’t use everything on that list. But some of it is underused, and that is probably where I’ll be able to cut back. I can get rid of the Audible subscription for awhile. I have audiobooks in my library that I haven’t listened to yet, so I will cancel that until I’ve caught up.

And done. I’ve just done that, so we can cross that off.

I can do the same with Kindle Unlimited. I can move all that stuff to Libby and other eBook library style apps like hoopla.

And that’s done. Just a note on both of these things, Amazon makes it stoopid hard to cancel. “Oh, are you sure?” Yeah, I’m sure, fucker. 🤣

The rest is pretty hard. The Paramount one will get cancelled once my mom and I are done catching up on Big Brother. We do use the Disney+ bundle, but sparingly. I will probably keep it until they raise the price and then yoink it. We get just enough use out of it that it’s probably worth it. I’ll also see about using it more so it doesn’t feel so unused.

YouTube TV and Premium are the worst. That’s almost half of my monthly subscription budget with just those two services. YouTube TV is split with my parents, and really we only need it for local channels. I’d love to use over the air, but they’re both in their 80s and can’t see shit. So using voice commands to switch the channel is the only way they can use the TV, or I have to go change the channel for them, which would suck for both me and them. They want to keep their independence, so this pretty much has to stay. I’d love to go to a cheaper service like Sling or something like that, but none of them offer local channels as part of their bundle. It sucks.

Premium is a waste of fucking money. If I liked the app, I could at least get rid of Deezer, but I can’t stand it. I only pay for it because I want to get ad-free YouTube. If ad blockers were still reasonably useful for YT, I’d drop this in a heartbeat. Hell, if it were only me, I’d do it. But my parents spend a ton of time on YouTube, and they hate ads. So, again, this stays. If they raise the price again, though, I will probably try to figure something else out.

So, I’ve saved myself about $27/month just by writing this blog post. I wish it were more. I am going to take another look at hosting my own music. That will get rid of Deezer. I’m going to pull my VPN into Proton, that will get rid of Mullvad. I’m going to get rid of Facer. I don’t need to change my watchface so often. I’ll just find some good solo faces and stick with those. I can probably cancel the Apple one if I can figure out how to get my photos off of iCloud.

There are places I can cut, so that’s going to be my goal. I want to see if I can cut the monthly stuff by at least 40%. I’ll also look into doing the math for the yearly subscriptions because that is probably going to be just as horrifying as that other number.

I now challenge you guys to list out your own monthly subscriptions. I think we all probably subscribe to more than we think we do. This was very helpful. Even if I don’t manage to get it down more, just knowing makes me feel better.