How to audit your subscriptions

1. List everything, including the small ones

The instinct is to write down the large subscriptions and skip the ones under a fiver. That is the wrong way round: the large ones are already known, and the small ones are where the surprise usually lives. Six charges of $7 a month are $504 a year.

Card and bank statements for the last three months will find most of them. Annual subscriptions are the ones people forget, because they only appear once.

2. Put every cycle on the same footing

A weekly class pass, a monthly streaming service and a yearly domain renewal cannot be compared until they are all expressed the same way. Annual cost is the honest unit, because it is the one that matches the way subscriptions actually accumulate.

3. Rate what you actually use

This is the part software cannot do for you. A gym membership used twice a week and one used twice a year cost the same and are worth entirely different amounts. SubTrack asks four questions per subscription — how often you use it, whether you would keep it, whether a cheaper plan exists, and what it is worth to you — and then adds up your own answers.

It does not decide. Two music services can both be wanted; a service you use once a month can be the most valuable thing on the list.

4. Look for genuine overlaps yourself

Three cloud drives may be three redundant copies of the same files, or they may be work, personal and family. Grouping them is a judgement, so SubTrack lets you make it and then shows what the group costs together and what dropping one would return.

5. Price the change before you make it

Cancelling is a decision with consequences that a number cannot capture. What a number can do is tell you what the decision is worth. Switch subscriptions off in What if, read the new annual figure, and then decide with the actual amount in front of you.

6. Check the renewal calendar before you finish

Annual renewals cluster. If four of them fall in one month, that month will feel expensive and the rest of the year will feel cheap — which is exactly why the monthly average alone is misleading.

Common questions