The subscription audit 💸

Export a statement, then delete your full account number, sort code, and running balance before it goes anywhere. You only need the date, the merchant, and the amount. Nothing else is required to do this and nothing else should be in there.

HOW: most banks let you export CSV or PDF from the statements page. Open it, delete the columns you don't need, save a copy.

Recurring charges hide because they're small and they're regular, the two things that make your eye skip them.

Copy:

Here are my transactions for the last three months. Find every charge that looks recurring: same merchant, roughly the same amount, roughly monthly or yearly. List them as a table: merchant, amount, how often, and my estimated annual spend on each. Sort by annual spend, highest first. Include anything that only appeared once or twice if it looks like a subscription that just started.

Ask it to make you defend each one. It's uncomfortable and that's the point.

Copy:

From that list, go through them one at a time and ask me when I last actually used it. Just one at a time, wait for my answer. At the end, give me three columns: cancel now, worth keeping, and think about it. Total up what cancelling the first column would save me per year.

Subscriptions go up quietly and the email announcing it goes to a folder you never open.

Copy:

Looking at the same merchants over the whole period: did any of them change price? Show me the old amount, the new amount, when it changed, and what the increase costs me per year. Flag anything that went up more than 10%.

Knowing is not saving. The list is worthless if it sits there.

Copy:

For each thing on my cancel list, tell me exactly where to go to cancel it: the specific page or setting, not just ‘contact support’. Order them by how much they cost me, most expensive first. If any of them are known for being difficult to cancel, warn me and tell me what to expect.

Subscriptions accumulate again. Six months from now there'll be new ones. Set a reminder to run this exact process twice a year and you'll never be more than six months out of date.