I did an audit of my subscriptions last month. The number came to fourteen. Fourteen recurring charges hitting my account every month, ranging from $4.99 to $29.99. I actively used five of them.

This isn’t unusual. A 2025 survey by C+R Research found that the average consumer underestimates their subscription spending by 133%. People think they’re spending about $86 per month on subscriptions. The actual figure is closer to $200.

The subscription model made sense when it started. Pay monthly for software instead of dropping $500 upfront. Access a library of content instead of buying individual albums or movies. Reasonable.

But then everything became a subscription. Your to-do list app. Your note-taking app. Your weather app. Your car’s heated seats. Somewhere along the way, “pay for what you use” turned into “pay forever for everything.”

How We Got Here

The shift happened because subscriptions are incredibly attractive to businesses. Recurring revenue is predictable. Investors love it. A company with $10 million in annual recurring revenue is valued much higher than one with $10 million in one-time sales.

So every software company, media company, and increasingly every physical product company pivoted to subscriptions. Even products that worked perfectly well as one-time purchases—photo editors, calendar apps, file converters—suddenly needed monthly payments.

The justification is always the same: “continuous updates and improvements.” But let’s be honest. Most of these apps reached functional maturity years ago. The “updates” are often minor UI tweaks or features nobody asked for, designed primarily to justify the ongoing charge.

The Psychological Trap

Subscriptions are designed around a specific cognitive bias: we evaluate recurring costs differently than lump sums. Paying $12/month feels manageable. Paying $144/year for the same thing feels like a lot. They’re identical, but our brains process them differently.

There’s also the “I might need it” effect. You keep Photoshop because you edited photos that one time six months ago and might want to again. You keep that meditation app because you went through a stressful week in November and it helped. The potential future value keeps you paying even when the actual present value is zero.

And cancellation is deliberately harder than signing up. Some services make you call a phone number. Others hide the cancel button behind multiple screens. A few require you to explain why you’re leaving, which feels just uncomfortable enough that some people give up and keep paying.

What I Actually Did About It

After my audit, I applied a simple test to every subscription: did I use this in the last 30 days? Not “could I use it” or “do I plan to use it” but did I actually open it and get value from it in the past month?

Seven subscriptions failed that test. I cancelled all seven on the same afternoon. That was about $87 per month—over $1,000 per year—going to services I wasn’t using.

For the ones I kept, I looked for annual pricing options. Most services offer a discount for paying yearly, typically 15-20% off. Yes, it’s a larger upfront cost, but it also forces you to make a deliberate decision once rather than letting monthly charges accumulate unnoticed.

I also set a calendar reminder every six months to repeat the audit. Subscription creep happens gradually. You sign up for a free trial, forget to cancel, and three months later it’s just another line item you’ve stopped noticing.

The Broader Problem

The subscription economy has a sustainability problem. As more products move to this model, the total cost of being a functioning digital person keeps rising. Streaming services alone can easily run $50-70/month if you want access to most major content libraries. Add productivity tools, cloud storage, news subscriptions, and fitness apps, and you’re looking at a significant monthly commitment.

Something has to give. We’re already seeing signs of pushback. Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends report noted that subscription churn rates are at their highest point in five years. People are cycling through services—subscribing for a month to watch a specific show, then cancelling and moving to the next one.

Companies that respond to this by making cancellation harder are making a short-term bet. The ones that’ll win long-term are those that deliver enough consistent value that the monthly charge feels obviously worthwhile.

A Simple Framework

Here’s my current approach: I allow myself a maximum of six paid subscriptions at any time. If I want to add one, I have to drop one. This artificial scarcity forces prioritisation and prevents the slow accumulation that leads to subscription bloat.

It won’t work for everyone, but the principle is sound. Set a budget, audit regularly, and be honest about what you actually use versus what you’re paying for out of inertia.

Your bank statement is a record of your real priorities. If it doesn’t match what you’d choose deliberately, it’s worth spending an afternoon fixing that.