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BUSINESS Wednesday 20 March 2019
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Millennial Money: How to stem ‘subscription creep’

By GREGORY KARP card, is that hindering your for the same service over
NerdWallet ability to pay off your bal- and over again,” McClary
Associated Press ance each month? If so, says.
From Netflix, Spotify and this is a red flag.” The same assessment goes
Amazon Prime to Blue — REASSESS VALUE. Do you for streaming music ser-
Apron, Birchbox and beer use and value the subscrip- vices, cloud storage and
of the month, your debit or tion? A gym membership is phone services. Are you
credit card statements are perhaps the best example hanging on to a landline
likely littered with subscrip- of a noble subscription for no reason?
tions that are costing you gone wrong — when you — OPT TO SHARE. Can you
dearly. quit going but continue legitimately share a sub-
Not that all subscriptions paying. Ask yourself if a sub- scription? “Some of these
are bad. You might be scription saves you money subscriptions offer a bud-
happy to pay a monthly or time. Has it lived up to its dy pass,” McClary notes.
fee to work out at the gym promise? Does a delivered YouTube TV allows family
or type in Microsoft Office subscription box bring you groups to share subscrip-
365. But maybe the ben- joy or guilt? tions, and certain New York
efits of subscribing to credit In this Friday, Jan. 17, 2014, file photo, a person displays Netflix “It’s a good idea to do a Times subscriptions come
on a tablet in North Andover, Mass.
monitoring or razors by mail Associated Press subscription evaluation on with a bonus subscription
were, uh, more fleeting. Pal. Go back 12 months to $1,800. a regular basis — perhaps to share. Some families
Recurring charges can catch auto-renew annual “On the surface, subscrip- a couple of times a year,” choose to group their wire-
be insidious, some eating subscriptions. Don’t ignore tion costs may seem mini- Golden says. less phones on a single plan
away at your wealth when the analog world: lawn mal, but when you add — IS IT REDUNDANT? If you to lower costs.
you don’t value the sub- mowing, home security them up it can really pinch have cable or satellite TV, Don’t forget about free-
scription anymore. Three monitoring, pest-control your monthly budget,” says plus Netflix, YouTube TV bies at your local public li-
$30-per-month subscrip- service and memberships Paul Golden, spokesman and Amazon Prime Video, brary, which can substitute
tions don’t sound like much in social and professional for the National Endow- you have overlap. “There for subscriptions: digital
until you realize they total organizations. Some credit ment for Financial Educa- are so many redundancies access to books, audio-
nearly $1,100 per year. card issuers, like Citi, identi- tion. “If you’re putting sub- across those platforms that books, movies, music and
Inertia leads to a dozen fy recurring charges in your scriptions on your credit you’re more or less paying magazines.q
free trials morphing into online account.
mainstays on your Master- — MULTIPLY BY 12. A frog
card. (Maybe not much in a stovetop pot of wa-
longer, though. Master- ter will complacently boil
card has said it will require to death if you raise the
merchants to get your ap- temperature slowly, the
proval to proceed with saying goes. Accumulat-
charges after a free trial ing monthly subscriptions
ends, although it applies is similar. To feel the full
only to physical-product impact, multiply monthly
subscriptions, like home- charges by 12 to get an
delivered sampler boxes .) annualized idea of what
“The situation with sub- you’re spending. If you see
scriptions could end up be- yourself keeping the sub-
ing death by a thousand scription five years, do that
cuts when it comes to your math too. Then, a seem-
budget,” says Bruce Mc- ingly insignificant $30-per-
Clary, spokesman for the month expense becomes
National Foundation for
Credit Counseling.
Adding to the problem are
so-called gray charges,
deceptive and unwant-
ed credit and debit card
charges that stem from
misleading sales and billing
practices. They total more
than $14 billion a year
among U.S. cardholders,
or $215 each, per a 2013
study by industry research
firm Aite Group.
Here’s how to spring-clean
recurring charges so you
can spend on things that
matter to you more.
— SUBSCRIPTION AUDIT. Job
No. 1 is to identify recurring
charges. Scan recent pay-
ment statements, including
credit cards, debit cards or
online accounts, like Pay-