How to audit your subscriptions in 15 minutes

A subscription audit sounds like a chore that takes an afternoon. It does not. Most people have somewhere between eight and fifteen recurring charges, and finding all of them is fifteen minutes of looking in three specific places, not an afternoon of guessing.

Where to actually look

• Your card statement, three months back, not one. Monthly charges show up every time; the ones that get forgotten are usually annual, and one month only catches them if you happen to be looking the week they hit.
• Your phone's subscription manager (Settings → your name → Subscriptions on iPhone, Play Store → Payments & subscriptions on Android). This catches app-store subscriptions that never show up on a bank statement as anything but “Apple.com” or “Google Play.”
• Your email, searched for “receipt” and “renewal” from the last twelve months. Annual subscriptions almost always send a renewal notice, and almost nobody reads it before the charge goes through anyway.

For each one, ask one question

Not “do I use this,” which almost everything passes on a technicality — you watched one show on it in March. The better question: would you sign up for this today, at this price, if you did not already have it? A yes means keep it without guilt. A no is worth cancelling this week, while you are already looking, rather than “eventually.”

💡Annual subscriptions are where audits pay off most, because they are the ones nobody feels monthly. $95 once a year reads as nothing next to a $12 charge every month, even when it is the bigger number over the year.