Woman Trying To Pay Off $30K In Debt Reveals The Staggering Amount Of Money She’s Saved A Year By Canceling Subscriptions
Even though it's hard to part with subscriptions you're enjoying, canceling them could save you a whole lot of money.
Cast Of Thousands | Shutterstock Getting out of debt is no easy feat. For many, it takes years, if not decades, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. One woman is finding her process has been sped up nicely by actually canceling those pesky subscriptions we all say we’ll get around to but rarely do.
A woman who is saving up in order to pay off $30,000 in debt saved a shocking amount of money just by canceling her subscriptions.
A TikTok content creator named Nicole, known as @whatshesaves on the platform, went through her process of canceling subscriptions to save money in a recent video. “Hi, my name is Nicole, and I’m currently paying off $30,000 in debt,” she said by way of introduction. “Let’s get into it.”
She then launched into the list of what she saved by canceling her subscriptions. “I had a podcast editing software that I was paying about $420 a year. That went down to zero,” she said. “Instead of paying $1,440 a year, I’m now paying $528.” In the comments section of the video, Nicole clarified that these numbers were in reference to her phone bill.
“My total Ring subscription was $398, and I knocked that down to $99 a year,” she continued. “My Netflix subscription was costing me $299.88 a year,” she said. “That went down to zero. My Hulu subscription was costing me $227.88. That went down to zero.”
She explained, “By going through and auditing the subscriptions I currently have, I am saving about $2,297.76, which is insane to me, so go and check your subscriptions and do the math.”
Subscription services are great in a lot of ways, but they come with challenges.
A survey from CNET found that the average person spends $91 on subscriptions each month, which adds up to $1,092 a year. CNET also addressed “subscription creep,” the concept of prices for subscriptions slowly (or maybe not-so-slowly) increasing over time.
“What’s more, companies increase the price of existing services on short notice or without much disclosure, sometimes in tandem with rollouts of new or expanded features,” Nick Wolny wrote for the tech outlet.
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In addition to their findings regarding the cost of subscriptions, CNET also discovered that 48% of their survey respondents admitted to signing up for the free trial version of a subscription and then forgetting to cancel it once the trial was over and it was time to start making payments. Another 12% said they really couldn’t afford subscriptions but paid for them anyway.
Subscription services are really great innovations. Isn’t it so much easier to pay one flat rate each month to listen to whatever music you want instead of having to pay for physical or digital versions of your favorite songs and albums? And don’t streaming services make it so simple to watch anything you could possibly want instead of having to juggle all of the complexities of cable?
If you want to get out of debt, you have to eliminate non-essential expenses, even if it’s hard.
That being said, subscriptions are far from perfect. As CNET noted, it is often very difficult to unsubscribe from them, something a new rule from the FTC is seeking to address to protect consumers. It’s also easy to lose track of what you’re paying for, or to become so attached to a certain service that you feel you can’t get rid of it, no matter how much the price increases.
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It may be difficult to let go of those subscriptions, especially if you really enjoy the service. But getting out of debt is all about saving money to put towards paying it off, and the best way to do that is to get rid of non-essential expenses. Unfortunately, it might be time to cut the (digital) cord like Nicole did.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.