The 30-Minute Subscription Audit

The average household underestimates its subscription spending by more than half. Thirty minutes usually finds $40–$120 a month — that's an effective hourly rate most jobs can't match.

Step 1 — Find them all (10 min)

Scan 90 days, not 30 — annual and quarterly charges hide outside a one-month window. Check:

• Every bank and credit card account
• App store subscriptions on each device
• Charges from unfamiliar billing descriptors (payment processors mask the real merchant)
• Anything billed to a partner's card for a shared service

Step 2 — Sort into four piles (10 min)

• Love it — used weekly, keep without guilt.
• Use it sometimes — downgrade to a cheaper tier or an annual plan.
• Forgot it existed — cancel today. These are the zombies.
• Duplicate — three music services, two cloud storage plans, overlapping streaming. Pick one.

Step 3 — Cancel, now (10 min)

Cancel while the decision is fresh. Momentum matters more than optimization — "I'll do it this weekend" is how zombies survive another year.

If a service makes cancellation deliberately hard, the Bills & Subscriptions page has a cancellation flow with the phone number, email, website link, and step-by-step instructions for 100+ common services.

The rules that prevent regrowth

1. One free trial per calendar. Set a reminder for two days before it converts.
2. Annual only for things you've used for six months. Annual plans are cheaper if the habit is proven.
3. Quarterly re-audit. Put it on the calendar. Fifteen minutes each time once the first cleanup is done.
4. One "yes" requires one "no." New subscription? Something else goes.

Compute the annual number

Multiply by twelve before you decide. "$14.99" is a shrug. "$180 a year" is a decision. Do this for every survivor of the audit and a few more will not survive.