The Subscription Trap and How to Get Out of It

In our modern lives, subscriptions have become more and more prevalent. What started out as a few magazine and newspaper subscriptions has grown into everything being available as a subscription.

A subscription promises to offer you a service for a low month price, if you could commit to paying them forever. Sometimes subscriptions do offer a better deal when you consider convenience, but other times they are merely a way to spread out the payments on something that you could purchase outright.

Many of us do not stop to ask if subscriptions are truly the best way to pay for something— after all, everyone is doing it. I’ve noticed that many of us have slipped into a subscription trap, where we mindlessly sign-up for subscriptions to new services, but rarely cancel an existing subscription unless we truly have no use for it anymore.

This is a trap because it locks us in to certain ways of doing things and ends up being more expensive in the long run. It’s like paying for single use item with a credit card and only paying the minimum balance each month. You may get what you want up front, but you could pay for it far more than you imagined over the long run.

In this article, I want to explore the ways we can break free from the cycle of subscriptions and steer our lives towards a simpler and more frugal trajectory.

The Hidden Costs of Subscriptions

Hidden Expenses: Subscriptions may seem like a great way to pay as you go, but unless you rigorously track your subscriptions (most people don’t), there’s a good chance you’re paying for subscriptions you don’t even use.

Paying More Over a Lifetime: While the monthly and annual rates may seem like a great deal, personal finance is quite simple: the fewer people you have between you and what you buy, the less you’ll pay over the long run. Why rent every time you want to use something (movie, book, software, etc..) when you can just own it?

Automatic Payment Systems: Most of us take advantage of a part of our brain that loves convenience. There’s a good chance you’re reading this article on your phone, for example, even though a laptop or desktop would be a bigger and more comfortable screen. Subscription services know this, and will make it as easy as possible to sign up and make payments automatic. This means you have to remember to cancel a subscription if you don’t want it renewing, and most people don’t.

Psychological Impact: Having subscriptions changes our relationship with money. Instead of buying something because you need or want it, subscriptions encourage you to want what you’ve been paying for to be useful. Instead of choosing to spend more time with your family, for instance, you might feel guilty that you haven’t watched enough TV to justify the subscription this month.

Repairability and Ownership: In a world that moves more towards streaming services (like streaming entertainment, books, software, or tools) you lose the ability to customize, repair, and enhance the things you already own. We come to think of life as something we consume at a flat rate, instead of a series of costly but important choices.

How to Break Free From Subscriptions

Evaluate Your Expenses: Look at your bills and credit card statements to make sure you’re not paying for any subscriptions that you’re not using, or not using enough to justify the cost. Go into this exercise with a skeptical eye as you’ll be biased towards keeping your subscriptions.

Go Without: When it comes to budgeting, it’s often easier to toss the whole thing out and start from scratch than to try to tweak your existing allocations. The same can be true of subscriptions. What would happen if you canceled them all and went without for a couple months, only adding back in what you miss and what is truly worth it.

Explore Pay As You Go: Not everything has to be a subscription. Many things are still available to purchase outright. Consider replacing subscription versions of software, tools, and entertainment with permanent versions that you own.

Embrace Simplicity: We live in a time of unprecedented choice and convenience, but at what cost? Consider that maybe you’ve grown to see convenience and access as absolute goods, but have forgotten to weigh them against other values in your life. Maybe your life would be better overall if you had a little less choice and had to make a few harder choices up front.

Support Local Businesses: Instead of renting in the digital world from far-off sources, spend more of your money in the real world by supporting local businesses and artisans. Not only will the money stay close to home, but you’ll be supporting a rich culture of communal trust and human connection instead of more faceless corporate consumption.

Invest in Quality: Another way to think instead of subscriptions is the idea of paying for quality that will last and hold its value. Instead of paying month after month for access to things you may never use, consider investing in high-quality things that will last a long time and won’t require maintenance.

Live With Less: At the heart of breaking away from the subscription trap is the idea of learning to live with less. Detox from all the ways of renting and consuming and instead consider a life of fewer but richer pleasures. Instead of subscriptions filling your life, spend less money and be content with less.

Conclusion

The Subscription Trap is real. It’s a way of keeping people paying indefinitely for something they may have preferred to own. While subscriptions have the allure of convenience and low up front costs, they can end up being a much more expensive way to live.

If you’re tired of being locked into subscriptions and paying more than you have to in order to fill your life with good things, then consider the tips in this article a way out. Besides just breaking free from the subscription trap, you may find yourself living a simpler life with less choice set before you, a benefit all its own.