We performed a recent audit of our subscriptions here at the G & G house and came to the conclusion that we were spending way too much monthly on services we barely use. I recommend every household do this. It's so easy now to sign up for a recurring charge, and then forget about it and continue paying months after you've stopped using it. Just by going through our accounts and toggling a few "auto-renewal" buttons to the "off" positions, we will save like $70 a month. That's not nothing.
I really hate that the subscription model has taken over our economy. It's one that favors the vendor much more than the consumer. I have no problem paying for something that I knowingly purchase and use. What I don't like is being duped into paying for something or having to buy a bunch of stuff I don't want in order to get the one thing that I do want. But this is often what happens when you buy a subscription. That's why I'm not above working the system -- using friends' credentials,* binge-watching during the free-trial period, and in some rare cases watching pirated streams. Although, you have to be careful with that latter one. You have to visit some shady sites in order to do this, and you're bound to get some weird viruses on your computer. I utilized these "shared" streams frequently when I lived in Australia because it was the only way I could watch NFL games without buying some crazy expensive package, but I did so with the knowledge that I would be buying a new laptop when I went back to the States, anyway. Also, toward the end of my time there, it got harder and harder to find these streams, as sites would frequently get shut down, and mainstream blogs started prohibiting users from posting free links in the comments sections.
*I've been streaming cable channels using my parents' cable credentials for over a decade. The beauty of this is that they canceled their cable subscription about four years ago. Their online credentials still work for some reason. Every time I enter them, I'm expecting to see a message telling me they're invalid, but that hasn't happened yet.
The thing now that really annoys me is how all software has moved to a subscription model. I opened up Microsoft Word today, and I got a message saying: "PRODUCT DEACTIVATED On Tuesday, October 15, 2024, most features of Word will be disabled." This is particularly irritating, as I purchased Office years ago, and I thought I was actually buying it, like, the old way, like, you download it, and install it, and you have it forever. But apparently not, and now they want to charge me $99 a year to reactivate it. I'm not doing it. It's partly out of principle, but more so because I simply don't use the software enough to justify that cost. I might pay $99 if it's a one-time charge (I thought I already did that), but not as a recurring fee. I do use Word sometimes for my crossword puzzles, but I can figure out a different way, or use my work computer, if need be. I usually like to keep a separation between church and state, when it comes to my work and personal computers, but I'll allow an exception if it'll save me $99 a year.
I'm sure companies have done the math and come to the conclusion that subscription models are better for their bottom lines, but certainly not in every case. There have to be people like me who would pay a one-time flat fee, but a not a recurring cost, and so by insisting on subscriptions, you lose the flat fee for those customers. Or people will subscribe for a short period (maybe just the free trial) and then cancel. I did that with the fancy version of Adobe Acrobat. I needed it for a project I was working on, so I subscribed for a month or two and then canceled when I was done, and I haven't needed it since then. Had I purchased the software outright, I would have paid about twice as much, and it would have been sitting on my computer unopened for the past few years.
I think that's the way to gain the edge -- you have to be vigilant about canceling things you aren't getting enough value from them. When we went through and really looked at it, I was surprised by how many services we basically weren't using at all -- MAX, for example. HBO used to be my favorite, but I realized that there is literally nothing on it I watch anymore -- Curb is over; Succession is over; Winning Time got canceled; and their classic shows, The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, etc. are long gone, and nothing has replaced them. Yeah, it would be cool to have access to their back catalog and their movies, but that's not worth a monthly subscription. I could probably rent anything I wanted for a fraction of the price, and if I get a wild hair and decide I wanted to re-binge The Sopranos or something like that. I will just get a free trial and/or buy one month at that time. There's no need to give them a monthly payment right now.
The same is true for Apple TV. Once Ted Lasso ended, we weren't using it at all, so we dumped it. I might have wanted to keep it if it allowed access to all the MLS games, but that's an extra cost on top of the regular monthly fee, so forget it. We also recently got rid of Paramount+*, Slate Plus**, and PlayStation Plus.***
*This is a the classic forgot-to-cancel case. I signed up for a free trial to watch Jack-Ass Forever, but then I kept it for a bit because I could also watch CONCACAF Champions League games, and then a year later, S asked if we could get rid of it, and I'm like, "We still have that!" That's how they get you, and they got me with this one.
**I went to shut off auto-renewal for this, but it had already been shut off. Past me was apparently one step ahead of current me.
***Lil' S1 used this for a while, but then he stopped playing PlayStation altogether for some reason. Lil' S2 only plays the big sports games -- Madden, NBA 2K, and such -- and those don't come with the subscription. Still, they both told me they wanted to keep it, so I said that they could renew it with money they got for their birthdays, and then they didn't want to do it, of course.
And we still have a lot of subscriptions even after that. We have Amazon Prime, which we use frequently, both for the shipping discounts and for the Thursday Night Football. We have Hulu (the basic version) and Netflix because S watches shows on them all the time. We have Peacock because S's sister got it and gave us a profile, and we have Disney+, just because. I'd like to add Disney+ to the purge, to be honest, but S insists it's worth it for the kids, because of all the MCU and Star Wars content and what not. I don't think it is worth it, but I do like having access to the full The Simpsons catalog, so I'm not going to press the issue too much.
There are just too many streaming services now. The joke, of course, is that everybody wishes they could have cable back, but it isn't really about packaging; it's about volume. There's just too much content to consume, and it's spread across too many services. It's not just TV either. The same thing is happening with podcasts and blogs. Everybody wants you to subscribe to their thing -- their Substack or Ghost or Patreon -- and there is so much great content out there, I wish I could do this with everything I like, but I can't. So, I pick out the one or two things I like the best, and then for everything else, I get the free version, or, if there is no free version, I just don't get it at all.
It's a brave new world, and it's so much better than the timid old world in so many ways. In theory, we can consume whatever we want whenever we want. In practice, however, we can't, because everything requires a recurring financial commitment now. And it's hard to figure out what's worth it, and what isn't.
Until next time...
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