So I was looking at my bank statement last month – something I probably don’t do often enough if I’m being honest – and I noticed this charge for $14.99 from something called “FitLife Pro.” And I just stared at it for like a solid minute trying to remember what the hell FitLife Pro was.
Turns out it was a fitness app I’d signed up for during one of my “new year new me” moments back in January. You know the type. Downloaded it, used it for maybe two weeks, and then completely forgot it existed while it quietly charged me every single month for… let me check… 14 months.
That’s $209.86 for an app I used maybe six times total.
This discovery sent me down a rabbit hole of checking every single subscription and recurring charge on my accounts. And what I found was honestly embarrassing. I’d become the exact person I used to judge – someone who was just bleeding money every month on stuff they didn’t use or even remember signing up for.
The Full Damage Report
Here’s what I found when I actually sat down and went through three months of statements. And I’m sharing the real numbers because I think it’s important to show how this stuff adds up:
Streaming services: Netflix ($15.49), Hulu ($17.99), Disney+ ($13.99), HBO Max ($15.99), Paramount+ ($11.99). That’s $75.45/month for streaming alone. Was I watching all of these? Absolutely not. I maybe used Netflix and HBO regularly. The rest were “I’ll watch that one show eventually” subscriptions.
Forgotten fitness stuff: FitLife Pro ($14.99), a meditation app ($12.99), and – this is the kicker – a gym membership for $49/month that I hadn’t stepped foot in since April. The gym was near my old office and I’d switched to working from home mostly. Just kept paying it out of pure inertia.
Those small monthly charges add up faster than you think. Photo via Unsplash.
Random software subscriptions: A photo editing app I’d signed up for one project ($9.99), some cloud storage service that was backing up files I could easily store elsewhere ($2.99), and a premium version of a note-taking app ($4.99) when the free version would’ve been fine.
Other stuff: A news site paywall I’d forgotten about ($10/month), an Amazon subscription box thing my girlfriend had signed up for on my account and then we’d broken up but the box kept coming ($24.99), and some kind of identity protection service that honestly I’m still not sure what it even did ($14.99).
Total monthly bleeding: $246.36. Round it to $247 because why not.
Two hundred and forty-seven dollars. Every month. For over a year in some cases. Just… gone. Into the void. For stuff I either didn’t use, didn’t need, or had completely forgotten about.
How This Even Happens
I used to think I was pretty good with money, you know? I track my spending, I have a budget, I paid off all that debt. But subscriptions are sneaky in a way that one-time purchases aren’t.
When you buy something for $50, you feel that $50 leaving your account. You make a conscious decision. But when you sign up for something that’s “$4.99/month” – that feels like nothing. It’s less than a coffee. Who cares?
But then you sign up for another thing that’s $9.99/month. And another thing that’s $14.99. And suddenly you’ve got 15 different subscriptions and none of them individually feel significant enough to bother canceling, but together they’re costing you almost $250 a month.
The FTC actually has a whole page about this – how companies use free trials and auto-renewals to get you locked into payments you forget about. They call it “negative option marketing” which sounds super ominous but basically just means “we’ll keep charging you unless you actively tell us to stop.”
And companies make it SO easy to sign up and SO annoying to cancel. That gym? I had to physically go into the location during specific hours to cancel. The identity protection thing required me to call a phone number and sit on hold for 20 minutes and then talk to someone whose entire job was to convince me not to cancel. Some of these services I swear make the cancel button invisible on purpose.
The Actual Audit Process
Alright so here’s what I did, and honestly it took like 45 minutes total once I actually sat down to do it. The hard part is making yourself sit down to do it.
First, I pulled up my last three months of credit card and bank statements. You want three months because some subscriptions are annual or quarterly and might not show up in just one month’s statement.
I went through line by line and highlighted anything that looked like a recurring charge. If I wasn’t sure what something was, I googled the merchant name. Sometimes companies bill under weird names that don’t match what you signed up for – that’s how FitLife Pro stayed hidden for so long, it showed up on my statement as “FLFPRO*DIGITAL.”
Then I made a list of every subscription with three columns: what it is, how much it costs, and when I last actually used it. That last column is the important one. Because some subscriptions are totally worth it – I use Netflix probably four times a week, that $15.49 is fine. But if I haven’t used something in 3+ months? Why am I paying for it?
Finally I sorted everything into three categories:
Keep: Things I actually use regularly and get value from
Cancel immediately: Things I forgot about or never use
Evaluate: Things I use occasionally and need to think about
The “cancel immediately” pile was way bigger than I expected. The “evaluate” pile turned into “cancel” for most things after I was honest with myself about whether I’d really use them going forward.
The Cancellation Gauntlet
Here’s the annoying part. Actually canceling these things took way longer than finding them. Like I said, companies do NOT make it easy.
The streaming services were the simplest – most of them you can cancel directly in the app or website in a few clicks. Netflix and Disney+ were painless. Hulu tried really hard to get me to “pause” instead of cancel but eventually let me go.
The gym was a nightmare. I had to go in person during business hours (when I’m supposed to be, you know, working), wait in line, fill out a form, and then they still tried to charge me for one more month because apparently I didn’t give “30 days notice.” I fought that one and eventually got it refunded but it took like three phone calls.
The meditation app had no cancel button anywhere in the app – you had to go to their website, log in there, navigate to some account settings page buried three levels deep, and even then there was this whole guilt-trip screen about “are you sure? You’ll lose your 237-day streak!” (which… I hadn’t meditated in 8 months so that streak was meaningless anyway).
FitLife Pro required me to email their “support team” and wait 48 hours for a response. The identity protection thing – I honestly gave up on hold twice before finally getting through on the third try.
But here’s the thing. Even though it was annoying, spending those few hours canceling stuff is saving me almost $3,000 a year. That’s a pretty good hourly rate for some tedious admin work.
What I Actually Kept
After all this, here’s what survived the purge:
Netflix – I use it constantly, it stays
HBO Max – Watching a few shows on there, keeping it for now but might rotate seasonally
Spotify – technically a subscription I didn’t mention earlier but it’s worth every penny
My cloud backup service – I downgraded to a cheaper plan but kept it because I do actually need backup
One news subscription – I consume a lot of news and it’s worth supporting actual journalism
Total new monthly spend: around $65. Down from $247.
That’s a savings of $182/month, or about $2,184/year. And honestly it doesn’t feel like I’m missing anything. I can’t even remember the last time I thought “man, I really wish I still had that meditation app” or “I should go to that gym I never went to.”
How To Avoid This Happening Again
So the question becomes, how do you prevent subscription creep from happening in the first place? Because obviously I thought I was being careful and I still ended up hemorrhaging money.
First thing I did was set a recurring reminder to do this audit every six months. I put it in my calendar. Every June and December, I go through my statements and check for subscription bloat. Twice a year is often enough to catch things before they get out of hand.
Second, I started using a separate credit card for all subscriptions. That way I can just look at one statement to see all my recurring charges in one place. Makes the audit way easier.
Third – and this is the big one – I instituted a “free trial rule” for myself. Anytime I sign up for a free trial, I immediately set a calendar reminder for 2 days before it ends. If I don’t actively decide to keep it when that reminder pops up, I cancel. No more “I’ll cancel later” and then forgetting.
Some people use apps that track subscriptions for you. I’ve tried a couple and they’re… fine? They definitely help find stuff. But I found that manually going through my statements made me more aware of what I was actually spending, which made me more careful about signing up for new stuff.
Also – and this feels obvious but apparently it wasn’t obvious to me – before signing up for ANYTHING with a recurring charge, I now ask myself “will I still want this in 6 months?” If the answer isn’t a clear yes, I don’t sign up. Or I look for a pay-once alternative instead.
The Bigger Picture Here
Look, I know $247/month might not sound like a life-changing amount of money. But let me put it in perspective.
$247/month is almost $3,000/year. Invested at a reasonable return rate over 20 years, that’s potentially $100k+ for retirement. Or it’s a nice vacation every year. Or it’s a significant chunk of an emergency fund.
And here’s what really gets me – I was paying that $247 while still carrying some of that original debt I’ve been working off. I was paying interest on debt while simultaneously throwing money away on subscriptions I didn’t use. That’s like… financial self-sabotage.
The subscription economy is designed to make you forget. Companies know that most people won’t bother to cancel, so they optimize for getting you to sign up and then staying out of your awareness. Every “start your free trial!” button is a bet that you’ll forget about it. And for a lot of us – myself clearly included – that bet pays off for them.
The antidote is awareness. Regularly checking what you’re actually paying for. Being honest with yourself about what you actually use versus what you’re paying for “just in case.” And being willing to spend an annoying afternoon canceling things, because that one afternoon can save you thousands over time.
Anyway, that FitLife Pro charge is gone now. Along with about $2,000/year in other stuff I wasn’t using. If you haven’t done a subscription audit in a while… maybe go look at your bank statement. You might be surprised what you find.
Related: How I cut my grocery bill without extreme couponing