Subscription audit

What It Means

A subscription audit is a sit-down review of every charge that renews on its own: streaming, apps, memberships, software, delivery plans and boxes. You list each one with its price, turn it into a yearly cost, and decide what to keep, downgrade or cancel. The FTC's name for an offer that keeps billing you until you tell it to stop is a negative option, and those are what an audit is meant to catch.

How It Sounds at Home

• "Wait, we're still paying for that?"
• "I signed up for the free trial and forgot to cancel."
• "Let's go through the card statement and kill what we don't watch."

The Breakdown

Worked example. Dee goes through a year of card and bank statements and her phone's subscription list, and finds six recurring charges (example prices):

Canceling two of them saves $23.98 a month, or $287.76 a year.

How to run one.

1. Go through a full year of bank and card statements if you can, so plans that renew once a year show up.
2. Check the subscription lists on your phone: on an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions; on Android, open Subscriptions in Google Play.
3. Put every charge on one list with its monthly and yearly cost.
4. Cancel what you don't use through each company's own cancellation steps, and keep a copy of each request.
5. Check your next statements to confirm the charges stopped.

What the result means. The yearly column tends to change decisions, since $12.99 a month adds up to $155.88 over twelve months.

Good to Know

The FTC's consumer guide on free trials, auto-renewals and negative option subscriptions says that if you don't cancel on time you'll probably be charged, so cancel before a trial ends. It suggests following the company's own cancellation instructions, keeping a copy of your request and notes of any calls, and watching your statements afterward; if charges continue after you've canceled, you can dispute them with your card issuer. Google Play Help notes that a canceled subscription stays usable until the end of the period you've paid for, and Apple Support says a subscription with no Cancel button, or with a red expiration message, is already canceled.

Related Terms and Categories

• Expense tracking

  Writing down every purchase and bill as it happens, by category, so you can see where your money actually goes and compare it with your budget.

• Budget review

  A regular check of what you actually earned and spent against your budget, followed by changes to the plan where it no longer fits real life.

• Fixed expenses

  Costs that stay about the same every month, such as rent, a car payment or an insurance premium, usually due on a set date.

Household money and budgeting