Unsubscribe Your Life

You get a few dozen emails each day.

About half of them are from services you subscribe to.

Most of them you don’t even read.

And some of the subscriptions you actually pay for - and never use.

OUCH.

According to a study from Chicago-based C+R Research, American consumers underestimate how much they spend on monthly subscriptions by an average of 250 percent.

They think they’re spending $86, but actually, they’re paying around $220!

MONTHLY.

Subscribe now!

Everything is a subscription today. Newspapers were the first. Now it’s all the rage: groceries, clothes, video games, and of course, music. (Eh em, …even this newsletter is a subscription.)

We went from buying a particular song, newspaper, or fancy dress to an onslaught of recurring music, articles, and a never-ending supply of clothes showing up on our doorstep.

But is it all worth it? Well, it depends on how much VALUE you receive. But when the average American spends about $200/month, it’s hard to wade through the value you get from each one. Never mind the hundreds of notification emails.

Trim the Fat

If you wish to save about $130-$150/month (or almost $1500/yr!), let’s start by cutting some subscriptions - and see if you miss them. To start, let’s go to your wallet.

Log into your bank account and view your recent credit card transactions and statements. Discover the services you’re paying for and decide, “Have I used this lately?” If not, unsubscribe.

That subscription to your favorite newspaper? Well, do you read it or find out via Twitter (X) or a news aggregator site? Unsubscribe.

That subscription to your favorite streaming service? When was the last time you watched a show? A few months? Cancel.

I personally subscribe to a coffee service. I tried a bag. It was the most delicious coffee I’ve ever brewed in my home. So for $12/bag, I receive coffee beans every few weeks. This is a subscription I use and enjoy. I’m actually saving money rather than buying it on the go.

The beauty of all this is that you can always re-subscribe - if you really want to. By eliminating swaths of subscriptions immediately, you begin to realize what you miss and what you don’t.

Emails don’t disappear on their own either. Reduce notifications and distractions by unsubscribing from emails that serve no purpose other than flooding your inbox. It’s healthy too.

A recent study from the University of British Columbia in 2019 found that individuals who limited their email distractions felt significantly lower levels of stress, and felt more energized.

Need a little guidance? Unroll.me is a service that will help you at least manage your subscription emails, let alone allow you to unsubscribe those pesky suckers.

Trust me. You’ll feel lighter!

Please Help!

Afraid to tackle the subscription monsters on your own? There are plenty of services available that can help (some, ironically, for a subscription fee). Below are a few services that can not only help you identify the culprits, but eliminate them too.

A few offer a paid plan, but most have a free trial you can utilize.

DoNotPay - markets itself as "the world's first robot lawyer"—it's ready and willing to help you contest parking tickets, cut through government bureaucracy, cancel digital subscriptions you've forgotten about, take on issues with customer service reps, and more.

Rocket Money is a comprehensive money-tracking service that looks at several different aspects of your finances, including the amount of money you're spending on digital subscriptions every month. Tip: it does need access to your bank accounts, but this is how it searches your transactions. If you decide there's something on the list that you can live without, then Rocket will help with that too.

Trim (app) works by connecting to your bank account to give you summaries of where your money is and what you're spending it on. You get breakdowns of spending categories (travel, shopping, health as well as lists of individual recurring payments (so you can see how many video streaming services you signed up for). Trim assists when you want to cancel or renegotiate something for a better deal (for a commission fee) like that gym membership you never use.

I’m not letting go of Amazon or Costco (both of which I pay for yearly), but that subscription you have for $15/month (which one was that?) should be on the chopping block.

Unsubscribe and don’t look back.

Save On,

Chris