A few weeks ago, I went through every subscription I pay for.
There were 41 of them, about $8,000 Canadian a year. That’s only the charges that repeat, before any one-off courses and programs.
I’ve been spending too frivolously this past year. I want to get much better at being fiscally smart with my money and build up our savings, so I sat down and looked at all of it. I had Claude go through a full year of my email and pull out every receipt and renewal. Then I went down the list one at a time and made the call.
Why there were so many
Part of it is that I’m a curious person.
I like to see how people do things: how their funnels work, what their onboarding feels like, how their content is put together, which emails follow after you buy. So for years I bought expensive products and offers just to experience them. A lot of what I paid for was a look behind the curtain.
I’ve got that experience myself now. I’ve built the funnels and written the emails. It’s not something I need to keep paying for.
Subscriptions went the same way. I like supporting creators, so I’d sign up because I wanted to back the person, then find out I didn’t really use it or enjoy it.
Good intentions, charged monthly.
What I cut
Crave (a TV Streaming Service in Canada), before the price went up. Quicken Simplifi, because my books live in my own notes now. A numerology app. A handful of memberships. QuickBooks is likely next.
Some were already gone by the time I got there. Flodesk, Speakflow and Saner.AI had all been cancelled, and seeing them on the list was a little reminder of how many tools I’ve tried.
All in, it’s about $1,500 a year, and none of it stung. That told me something. If I can drop that much and not miss a thing, I was paying for the idea of those things more than the things themselves.
What I kept
Some of my snail mail is staying. Poem Club and Amber J. Baldwin’s Story Post are definite keepers.
So are the tools that make my business work better. Obsidian Sync keeps my notes and everything else on all my devices. Claude I use every day, all day. It’s about $1,680 a year, and it’s staying.
The ones that survived are the ones I use, or the ones I wait for at the mailbox.
That’s a much shorter list than 41, and I like it better. I’m carrying this through to the end of the year too, with no new spending in the business until January beyond what’s already on the books.
So I’m curious about you. What’s the one subscription you’d never give up?
Life first. Work optional.It’s your business, your energy and your rules.