S1 E8: Subscriptions: too easy to ignore

In this episode of the Money Healing Club podcast, hosted by financial therapist Rachel Duncan, listeners delve into the practicalities of managing and canceling subscriptions. Rachel answers a Club member question about organizing and letting go of unwanted subscriptions, providing three key methods: using an app like Rocket Money, an analog approach with spreadsheets and credit card statement reviews, and the 'nuclear option' of reporting a credit card as lost or stolen.

Rachel invites you to join the upcoming 'Get Your Money Organized' challenge starting on January 13th for more hands-on support.

https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/club

Use code PODCAST for a special discount!

00:38 Listener Question: Managing Subscriptions

01:29 Practical Tips for Organizing Subscriptions

04:26 Using Apps to Track Subscriptions

05:19 Analog Methods for Subscription Management

06:18 The Nuclear Option: Canceling All Subscriptions

08:50 Summary and Final Thoughts

09:44 Join the Money Healing Club Challenge

My Gift To you: Subscription tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16RFQ3JGxyeBpKwWLav9cbLdy8m8xC27eGZGe371fzw8/edit?usp=sharing

References:

Federal Trade Commission Announces Final “Click-to-Cancel” Rule Making It Easier for Consumers to End Recurring Subscriptions and Memberships, October 14, 2024: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring

• Read The Transcript Here

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Duncan. I'm a financial therapist and art therapist, and you've come to the softest place to land in personal finance. This podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. For help with your particular situation, please seek help from a licensed professional in mental health, taxes, and finance.

  Here, we talk about all the things we don't usually say when we talk about money. Let's begin.

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  Speaker 2: Hi, Rachel. I have a question about subscriptions. I have a lot of subscriptions. Some I really enjoy and some I could probably cancel. Do you have any resources or tips on how I can organize the subscriptions I have? And then the deeper question is, how can I let [00:01:00] go of the ones that I don't need any more.

  For some reason navigating the website or doing whatever requirement is needed to cancel the subscription is something I avoid. So please Rachel help me. How can I clean up my subscriptions? Thank you so much. I appreciate everything you do with the Money Healing Club and I'll see you at the next meeting.

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  Speaker 7: We've been doing a lot of episodes about the emotional and cultural and relational aspects of money. But today we're going to get into brass tacks and talk about something really practical, which is how can I identify and delete my subscriptions? How can I manage this? I love this question that was brought to me by a new money healing club member.

  So thank you for sending this message.

  So when I'm first sitting down with someone to help them get a good [00:02:00] picture of their money, when they're ready to do the more practical thing, I like starting with a spreadsheet. I give all my clients and club members a spreadsheet where there is a tab for different aspects of your money.

  . Because here's the thing about subscriptions. Often we add them as an impulse buy, but then they stay in our personal finance engine like a fixed expense.

  So we have two ways we can spend. We have more discretionary funds. You might call that impulsive stuff for things that are harder to plan for. And then you have fixed expenses, for example, rent and debt payoff in utilities. So the tricky thing about subscriptions is they kind of bridge these two things where you might impulsively, you know, sign up for an app and then it shifts over to be a monthly, quarterly or yearly thing.

  That's almost more like a utility bill. And. By nature, they're sort of sneaky and sometimes difficult to cancel.

  In fact, in [00:03:00] October of 2024, Trade Commission announced a click to cancel rule, which makes it easier for consumers to end recurring subscriptions and memberships. This rule will be in place later in 2025, but it's essentially making it a requirement for companies that rely on subscriptions and memberships to make it as easy to cancel a membership as it is to join one.

  It also has other consumer protections and I will link to that article in the show notes. But this is a really important step in protecting people from these kind of predatory subscription programs. As well as Convoluted websites that make it really hard to get out of something. It just shouldn't be this hard.

  And there's been enough outcry that the government is actually stepping in to protect us. When I heard about this, I immediately checked to make sure that my membership was as easy to cancel as it [00:04:00] is to join

  because consent matters.

  Okay, I promise this would not be an emotional podcast episode, but I get really worked up about this stuff.

  Okay. So back to the facts.

  So number one, you asked, how can I get organized? I know I've got these subscriptions. I've probably added more than I realize, and I'd like to just know what I'm keeping so I can choose what not to keep. I think there are a couple of ways to do this. The only app I have heard that helps you identify subscriptions is rocket money.

  I am not a sponsor. It is just one that my clients have used even briefly, even just paid for rocket money, maybe for one month because it in itself is a subscription guys. And after you link it up with your accounts, it can identify the recurring charges and organize it for you. And then I believe there's an added service probably for a little more money where rocket money will actually go in and delete the ones that you want.

  But even just getting that list might [00:05:00] get you on the right track, right? Like, Oh, the Netflix I'll definitely keep, but I think I can lose the Spotify or whatever it is. But if you don't want to keep Rocket Money, you also have to remember to go in and delete that subscription. How meta. By the way, if anybody knows of another app that offers this service, please let me know.

  The next option is a little more analog. It is going into your credit card statements. If you have multiple credit cards, you might need to log into every one. Also checking account statements and simply reading through. Catching any of the subscriptions that are there that you may have missed as the month went along.

  Sometimes subscriptions show up with weird parent company names and then you have to go look them up. If there's a charge for like 599 and it's got some weird name, I just Google that name. Usually that pinpoints, Oh, that's the parent company of some other product that I bought.

  If you go this more analog [00:06:00] option, I recommend you just open up a Google sheet and start listing them out so you can decide what you're going to keep and not keep. And you can keep track of them as you research them and go through and unsubscribe. And as a little gift to you, if you go to the show notes, after you listen to this, I have a Google sheet for you to copy for you to track your subscriptions.

  The third option I call the nuclear option. I got this idea from a client. If your subscriptions are just out of hand, if your credit card is saved. On who knows how many websites and you feeling like it's out of control and you do not want to spend the time to go into each one or figure that out. You can call in your credit card as lost or stolen.

  What that does is it immediately stops all charges on that card wherever it's being saved. It does not impact your credit score. You will be mailed a new card with a new number And what will happen then as the [00:07:00] months go along and these subscriptions can't charge can't auto renew, you'll start getting emails, right?

  We couldn't charge your card, blah, blah, blah. Then you can take each email as it comes and decide, is this thing worth it for me to re subscribe to, right? If It's a meal delivery you truly love and depend on, then okay, then you can log into that and add your new credit card. But what I like about this option is it makes the default everything cancels.

  And you will have to deal with some emails, it's true, but also you can just deal with the emails as they come. I also like this option because some subscriptions are quarterly, or every six months, or even every year. And those can really catch us off guard, I think more than the monthly, because you'd have to look through so many statements to find them in an analog way.

  Or if you don't want to go with using an app like the Rocket Money app.

  But with the nuclear option. You can ask [00:08:00] yourself, do I value this service enough to go through and enter my new credit card number? Look, all of us, our cards are stored in so many corners of the internet. This third option is great. If your saved payment methods have just run amok, it's just too easy to buy.

  It's just too easy for things to resubscribe. And you'll notice this happens every few years when your credit card expires and you need a new one. That is also a natural time when your subscriptions will not be able to auto renew.

  The risk of the third option is there could be some important services that aren't able to bill again, like maybe your cell phone or whatever else you may have on your credit card. So it's going to take some diligence for you to make sure you have resubscribed to the things that are really important when you get that new card number.

  So in summary, option one ,

  You can use an app like the RocketMoney app to identify [00:09:00] subscriptions. You can then decide to put in a little more money to have that service delete them for you or set aside an hour go through each one, log in, and try to cancel that subscription.

  Option two, Go through the last month of every account you have every credit card and every checking account just look through the transactions and you'll probably know what are subscriptions and what aren't and If any have funny names, just do some research. Have a spreadsheet and kind of do this more analog tracking.

  That's just fine. And that is a big part of financial self care. The last option, which will definitely take care of all of your subscriptions, is the nuclear option where you call in your card as lost or stolen.

  And if you want some more support with aspects of financial self care, like managing subscriptions, please join us in the club.

  No matter how you want to handle your subscriptions, it really helps to be in [00:10:00] community while you do it and not do it alone. It's just too easy to ignore. And that is what these subscription companies want from you. So here's the thing. Fight back. Join the Money Healing Club and Get some support getting your money organized the week of January 13th We are running our get your money organized challenge and guess what we do on Monday the 13th We talk about subscriptions.

  Starting with subscriptions Knowing the money you're saving by catching these subscriptions and canceling them, having mindfulness about the ones that you're keeping can really bolster your confidence as you get into the weightier topics of income, debt, and discretionary spending.

  During the challenge week, We meet every day for half an hour, quick little check in call. I help everybody with their spreadsheets. We do a little coworking time. You can catch a replay. We work on it all week. Even if you miss a call, it's okay. And then by the following week, if you have.

  if you have finished [00:11:00] getting a whole picture of your finances, we do giveaways, we do badges. It is really a good time. And so many people have shared it's the first time they got to see a whole picture of their money. The very last tab of the spreadsheet is a summary page. If you remember on the previous episode, Haley talked about how that summary page changed her life.

  The summary page will tell you, do you have a spending problem or an income problem? Or a debt problem. These are different kinds of problems that take a different kind of solution.

  So anyway, I could talk about the challenge all day long on this podcast, because it is my favorite week of the quarter. We run them quarterly. So if you're not already on our email list, get on the email list. So you get all the reminders about it.

  And look, it's never too late to get better with money.

  The excitement is already brewing in the club to get this challenge going. Even people who've done the challenge in the past. It's time to update those numbers.

  You won't regret it. If you join the money healing club, [00:12:00] especially the week of January 13th. Use the code podcast for a special discount when you join. And if you check the show notes, I've got a little present for you. A little subscription spreadsheet to get your subscriptions organized. I really hope this helps and I will see you in the club.

  We are in this together and I really appreciate you.

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  Thanks for listening to the Money Healing Club podcast. You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes and at moneyhealingclub.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, you probably really love my free email course on curbing impulse spending with compassion and mindfulness.

  Check that out at moneyhealingclub/slash challenge.

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