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Welcome to Money Talk for Real, a podcast where I talk about making money, spending money, and everything in between. I'm Nick, and in this episode, I want to talk about some subscriptions that you are probably wasting money on. And I say you, this is what I would consider most people. We all have the same money problems, no matter how much or how little money you have. Most people are just paying for things that they don't even use. And with subscriptions specifically, they are very sneaky. They're small monthly charges. You don't really even notice them until you add them all up. And you probably have at least a few of these on this list. I'm not saying that all subscriptions are bad, but it's it really comes down to the value versus the usage. The goal is to cut the ones that you don't actually use, which honestly can free up hundreds of dollars per month. No exaggeration there. It actually can if you add the small monthly charges into your monthly expenses. So the first one is the streaming services. Now, we all have streaming services, and again, the goal is to not get rid of everything, but the streaming services that you barely watch, you probably, I would assume, have multiple platforms, multiple streaming services, but you probably only use like maybe one or two. And would would, you know, if you have 10 streaming services, but you're only watching one show on one of the services, can you compromise maybe by not watching that show and getting rid of that service? I mean, um, you're at that point, if or all them services, if you're not using them, you're paying for options. You're not paying for actual usage. So maybe you consider rotating them instead of stacking them. So let's make some stuff up here as an example. If you have Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Stars, maybe you rotate them. Maybe you do stars for two months when a new season of your favorite show comes out. And then after you catch up on that season, you cancel stars and activate Amazon Prime and use that for a couple months. Again, just a random example. But rotating them out would give you better options with your money rather than paying for 10 streaming services and only using like two or three. The next one is gym memberships. And again, gym memberships that you don't use. Do you really need a gym membership to a gym that has a juice bar and a sauna and a swimming pool and activities and games and an on-site director as a staff? Like, do you need that or can you go to a quote lower-end gym? Or if you legitimately need a gym like that, there's a possibility that you're paying monthly subscriptions to this gym, but you're not actually going. It's time to be honest with yourself about your usage. You know, maybe you got a little overzealous at the beginning of the year or whenever your resolution timeline started. And you maybe even used it for a while, but are you using it now? And even if you're still working out, that's great. But are you using the gym specifically? Can you cut that back? Can you maybe do exercises at home? Can you do push-ups and sit-ups and bodyweight squats and planks and go for a jog and get a good, effective workout without paying a crazy monthly gym membership fee? I can't answer that. That's totally up to you. But I would say gym memberships, to be honest, is probably one of the most common wasted expenses, especially a subscription type of expense. The next thing to talk about is premium app subscriptions, talking about apps on your phone. This can be photo apps, this can be productivity apps, random digital tools, right? Um there's usually with most of these types of subscriptions, a free version exists. Usually. And yes, you might not get all of the features, but again, are you using all of the features, or is it just a convenience knowing that it's there in case you might want to use it? Sometimes the free version is the way to go. Or you signed up for a free trial or a free version and you forgot about it. And now six months later, you wake up and you're still paying for these premium app subscriptions. The next thing, music streaming and specifically duplicate plans, because you might have multiple services and you're getting the access to the exact same music on the exact same release date that you would by just having one music streaming app or service. Or you're paying for unnecessary upgrades. Um, sometimes music, you know, will have less ads or something, and it's like, hey, that's I understand ads are annoying, but it's also annoying not having any money. So consider that. And then another thing to consider with these services, these streaming services, is family plans versus individual plans. Can you all share? Can a husband and wife share potentially? I don't know. Can you log into the same amount account under a family plan instead of each of you having your own? And then the other one can cancel and save that money. This is somewhere that I would consider to be an easy place to trim the fat, so to speak. And a lot of this music nowadays, and I'm not saying do anything unethical or illegal, but even on the up and up, there are ways to access music. There's YouTube where you can listen to music. There's a lot of places that you can go legally and ethically to access music, you know, without without paying crazy subscription fees. The next thing is subscription boxes. This is clothes, this is boxes for snacks, random monthly boxes that are, you know, everyday carry for men type boxes. You know the ones I'm talking about. These are boxes, maybe makeup boxes or feminine boxes for women. They're exciting at first, I get it. And they sell, they do very good with marketing. They sell you on it. You think, oh wow. You know, it's like the kid that walks in the grocery store and sees the gumball machine or the toy machine and he wants that exact toy. So you keep paying until you get that exact toy. But you never do. You get a subscription box that was like, oh, that was kind of a letdown, but you keep paying for it. Again, they're exciting at first, but later on, they become clutter. And a lot of these subscription boxes, not all, but a lot of them are filled with cheap imported junk. You're better off to just go buy the one item that you want instead of paying for the monthly subscription box. You stop caring for these boxes or caring about these boxes, but you keep paying for them, right? So something to consider. The next thing cloud storage that you don't need. Now we are in the digital world. We all take lots of photos. We have videos, we have files, we have songs and music and everything on our phones. Cloud storage is maybe necessary, but are you paying for extra storage that you're not using? Maybe it's worth doing an audit, so to speak, on your phone. Check how much space you actually use. You could possibly downgrade the amount of storage and save some money, or maybe even eliminate it completely. Or maybe use, you know, a different account. For example, if your iCloud storage is full on your phone, can you export some of those photos to a Google Drive, which is free, right? And then that frees up storage on your iCloud. Just something to think about. Gaming subscriptions is something else I would talk about. This can be like online type memberships, access to game rooms online, or even game passes, or something that you pay for getting rid of ads on a game, or something that you buy tokens on a game as a subscription type thing. You may be paying for stuff that you're not actively playing. And again, somewhere maybe easy to trim, trim some unnecessary expenses. And a lot of these, especially this gaming one, in my opinion, it's gonna feel cheap monthly, so you don't think much about it, but it adds up yearly. My saying is pennies turn to dollars over time. Next is news or media subscriptions. These are things like articles, newsletters, access to premium content, usually digitally, right? Or but it could also be magazines and things you get in the mail. Are you actually reading that stuff? Or did you just want to read one article that had a paywall behind it? And so you signed up for the subscription, you forgot to cancel it, and now you never look at it again. Maybe worth looking at this. This is an easy thing to cancel, in my opinion. You can still get the news on multiple other apps and multiple other sources without paying for the premium content, without ads or pop-ups. I get it, they're annoying. But these we're trying to save money here. There's subscriptions that we're trying to get rid of is the theme of this episode. Next is fitness or diet apps. Again, I'm not picking on anyone. It's great to be healthy, it's great to be in shape, but I'm talking about things like workout plans, maybe a calorie, some sort of calorie trackers or coaching apps. You probably signed up with motivation, you had good intention, and again, you probably used it for a little while, but then you stopped using it. Or you learned enough from that app to where you don't need a coach anymore. You needed a coach to get started because you didn't know what you're doing, but now you know what you're doing. You know how to track your calories for free. You don't need to keep paying a subscription for that stuff. But again, going back to the flip side would be you stopped using it. You had good intention at first, but maybe just a bad follow-through. So something to consider. The last thing of, in my opinion, a subscription that, you know, would be wasted money, potentially, is a free, and this can be any category, but essentially free trials that you forgot to cancel. And I've talked about that on a couple of other categories a minute ago. Like this is the classic trap. This is the marketing strategy. They're gonna give you seven days free. They're gonna give you a month free, they're gonna give you three months free. The biggest ones that I have found to be the biggest trap are the long timelines. Like, we're gonna give you a year free because the longer the timeline, the easier it is for you to forget about it. And they're sneaky because they don't remind you when it's time to renew. They just drafted out of your account. The classic trap. Again, it turned the free trials turn into paid subscriptions that just sneakily get nickel and dimed out of your bank account. In my opinion, and maybe this is just me, this is one that gets everyone at least once. All right. So um something to consider are the free trials. Now, let's talk about what you can do, in my opinion, on some things to kind of address this. Number one is to just check your bank statements, be involved in your own finances, save your own life, so to speak. Save your own financial life. Look at your bank statements, look for recurring charges, which what that means is something that gets charged every month, every week, whatever, just a recurring charge, something that comes out automatically on a regular basis or a regular interval automatically. This is where the truth is. You will find the truth right here in your subscriptions that you're paying for. And then ask yourself a question Would I sign up for this again today, right now? If the answer is no, then cancel it. If the answer is yes, then that tells me that it's something you legitimately need and maybe you shouldn't cancel it. The next thing going along with that is if you cancel it, don't wait. Don't do the, well, let me think about if I need it or not. Let me think about it. Let me think about it. If you hesitate, you're gonna keep paying. You're gonna have a notification pop up on your phone, you're gonna swipe to something else, you're gonna forget about it, and you're gonna keep paying these subscriptions. And again, I did not exaggerate when I said at the beginning of the episode that this could save you hundreds of dollars per month. If it's $5 here, $5 there, $10 for a newsletter or a newspaper access, um, $20 for a gym membership. Like these are just things that add up very quickly. Keep only what you actually use. Focus on the value. Are you getting what you're paying for? Because if not, it's your fault because you're not using it and you're paying it just for convenience. The what if? Well, I might want to read that one day. I might want to go to the gym again one day. You can always add it back, but for now, cancel it. A few of the good subscriptions that you're actually going to use are a lot better than a bunch of wasted subscriptions that again you're paying for for convenience. This is low effort, high impact. This whole exercise of checking your subscriptions. You don't typically have to change your lifestyle. Most people waste a lot of money here without even realizing it. And it's this is a fast way to save money by going through this exercise. Small monthly savings is a big yearly difference. If you want to talk about money, I would love to walk through your situation specifically, walk through the numbers, the math, and help you out. Visit my website at money talkforreal.com. Click on debt help, send me a voicemail, send me your situation that I can play on the podcast. If you're not comfortable with doing that, you can type it all out, send it in, and I'd love to talk about it. You can stay anonymous. That's all for this episode. I'll catch you on the next one. This is Money Talk for Real.