Dec. 29, 2022 "How to take stock of your subscriptions": Today I found this article by Rosa Saba on BNN Bloomberg:
As 2022 comes to a close and the cost of living continues to climb, many Canadians are looking for ways to cut back on spending — and some are looking to trim down on subscriptions.
But with subscription services offered in almost every category these days, it can be hard to keep track of exactly how much you're spending on a monthly basis.
Heading into the new year, freelance journalist John Loeppky took stock of his finances and noticed a lengthy list of regular credit card charges.
“It can very easily get away from you," he said.
For both business and personal use, Loeppky had lost count of how many subscription services he was paying for.
While many of them are services he, needs,
uses often
or values enough to keep,
there were a few he wasn't using and a few he had forgotten to cancel.
It's tempting to see a charge on your credit card and tell yourself you'll deal with it later, he said, but when you actually do the math, all of these subscription payments add up to the equivalent of a few mortgage payments every year.
“It’s that thing where it’s a death by a thousand cuts."
Subscriptions aren’t a new concept, but these days you can subscribe to almost anything. You can get wines of the month, novelty cereals, or even specific products like moisturizer on a recurring basis. You can subscribe to get regular deliveries of shampoo and conditioner, dog treats, and printer ink.
And then there are the less tangible subscriptions, like online storage, password managers and — perhaps ironically — budgeting apps.
One of the most ubiquitous subscription categories is, of course, entertainment. An October survey by the Angus Reid Institute found that more than four in five Canadians have at least one streaming service, up from around half in 2016, as more and more shift from cable and satellite TV to digital options. (The survey also found that some Canadians were cutting back on streaming subscriptions in response to the rising cost of living.)
These streaming subscriptions might not cost much individually, but Angus Reid found that 23 per cent of Canadians have three, while another 17 per cent have four. Say you had the basic packages for Netflix, Crave, and Disney+; you’d be paying more than $40 a month on those services alone.
Add on a meal kit for two,
razor blades,
a personal interest subscription box,
Spotify or Apple Music,
cloud storage,
a Patreon subscription for your favourite podcaster,
a couple of news outlets,
an audiobook subscription,
and the premium tier of a food delivery app
— you could be looking at another $200 or more per month.
In fact, there are so many subscription options that there are now apps to help you manage your subscriptions (and some of those apps are themselves subscriptions).
Companies seem to have caught on to how lucrative the subscription model can be, said Jessica Moorhouse, a money expert and host of the More Money Podcast, in an email.
“Like many other Canadians, I've definitely fallen into the trap of having pretty much every TV subscription available,” said Moorhouse, adding that she also subscribes to Spotify and a fitness app.
Because she tracks her spending, Moorhouse finds herself with plenty of opportunity to review her monthly costs and cut the ones that aren't worth it.
Often people don’t even know how many subscriptions they have or how much they’re costing on an annual basis, she said.
If you’re trying to cut back on subscriptions, Janet Gray, an advice-only financial planner with Money Coaches Canada said you should see whether any of the ones you have offer a “pause” option. That way you can try going a few months without them to see whether you really miss them.
While some subscriptions offer a discount if you pay for a year, Gray recommends taking the monthly option if you're having trouble keeping track. That way you can better monitor your subscription costs and avoid a nasty annual surprise, she said.
If you’ve signed up for a free trial, Gray said you should put a calendar reminder right away to unsubscribe so you don't end up with a surprise charge.
And while many people put these payments on their credit card, if you’re having a hard time with debt or you find it a little too easy to say yes to subscriptions because they’re on credit, she said you can try putting subscription payments on your debit card instead.
You can also look into family versions of subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify to help everyone save a few dollars.
If you feel the urge to subscribe to something, Moorhouse recommends taking some time to think about it and how it might fit into your budget. You can even write down what you’re interested in subscribing to and consider why — was it an influencer post? An ad? A friend’s recommendation?
“This way, you can look back over time and see a pattern. For example, if there's a particular influencer you follow and you find they are really effective in influencing you to buy stuff, maybe it's time for you to hit mute or unfollow to take back control of your spending.”
If you want to get a full picture of all your subscriptions, Moorhouse said you should look at a year’s worth of bank and credit card statements so you don’t miss anything.
“The questions you need to ask yourself are
‘Can I afford this?’ and
‘Do I still get value or joy from this?’”
she said. If the answer is no, cut the subscription — and you’ll likely not miss it.
“Moreover, if your financial situation improves and you do really miss it as part of your life, you can always re-subscribe.
Cutting something from your budget doesn't have to be permanent.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 29, 2022.
How to take stock of your subscriptions - BNN Bloomberg
Jan. 8, 2023 "Monthly subscription bills might be slipping through your budget. Here's how to keep them in check": Today I found this article by Jennna Benchetrit on CBC:
When Mississauga, Ont.-based money coach Vanessa Bowen sat down with a client last year to go through the woman's finances, the pair realized something was askew: a monthly Spotify charge had seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Did she know that she was paying for the music streaming app? No, because she doesn't use it. Had the company somehow charged her mistakenly? Probably not, Bowen told her. Then, the woman remembered.
"She's like, 'Oh my gosh, I've been paying for my ex-boyfriend's Spotify!'" Bowen recounted. "She was spending all this money on someone who was not even in her life anymore."
Canadians are signing up for subscriptions left and right, and companies are all too happy to oblige.
It's quick and easy for the buyer, and a steady flow of cash for businesses that can automatically renew the subscriptions on a regular basis.
But some people forget that they've signed up at all — and then the bills start piling up.
"Maybe we use it for a couple of weeks, but then we forget about it," Bowen said. "Life gets in the way ... but that charge is still hitting our credit card, still impacting our finances."
CBC News spoke with experts who shared how to stay on top of those subscription fees — and what to do when you just can't find the unsubscribe button.
'A fundamental shift in the way companies do business'
Anyone with a newspaper subscription can tell you that the model has been around for a long time.
But a 2010 wave of direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands — like Dollar Shave Club, which delivers grooming products by mail — is what started the modern subscription boom, according to Adam Levinter, the Toronto-based founder and CEO of Scriberbase and author of The Subscription Boom.
Now, it's a ubiquitous fact of life. Sure, you've probably got Netflix or Disney Plus, but you can also get a monthly mystery box filled with cosmetics, or quirky flavours of tea and coffee, or meal-kits with pre-measured ingredients — down to the teaspoon.
"The last 10 years has seen just a massive shift in more and more companies moving in this direction, not just e-commerce companies, but platform companies, software companies, services companies," Levinter said.
The UBS financial services firm predicts the global subscription market will grow to $1.5 trillion US by 2025, more than double the $650 billion US it was estimated to be worth in 2021.
"This is a big fundamental shift in the way companies do business. And at the same time, it's a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with companies."
Businesses are more interested than ever in building long-term relationships with the consumers who buy their products. While it used to be up to companies to bring customers back for repeat transactions, the emphasis on subscriptions has changed that.
"In a subscription business, the onus now shifts to the customer, so the company assumes the customer is otherwise satisfied with the product or service and will continue to bill that customer in perpetuity unless the customer decides to cancel," Levinter said.
Bowen, who runs a financial coaching firm called Mintworthy Co., said the problem is that people rarely want to part ways with their subscriptions. More than 85 per cent of Canadians have at least one monthly subscription, an Angus Reid survey from October found.
But the same survey showed that one in three Canadians had cancelled a subscription in the prior six months, with half of them citing the ongoing cost of living crisis. Those who hung onto their subs might just have a tough time saying so long, Bowen said.
"Once you have a subscription in your life, even if you're not using it consistently, your mindset comes to this point of, 'Well, maybe I will need it next month or next week,'" said Bowen.
"Once you have it, it's very hard to say goodbye."
A longer goodbye
Saying goodbye can be especially tough when the company wants to make it so: the dreaded "subscription trap." A Vancouver woman told CBC's The Cost of Living last year that she was forced to cancel her credit card after a company made it exceedingly difficult to get out of a subscription.
"It would help if there was greater standardization of subscription contracts and time intervals," said Kenneth Whitehurst, the executive director of the non-profit Consumers Council of Canada, in an email to CBC News.
Whether subscriptions can be cancelled easily is a matter of opinion, usually related to whether a website is user-friendly, he added. The council doesn't get many complaints about online subscriptions, but "I think the worry for people is that they authorize term agreements with recurring payments, unwittingly."
"There need to be clearer rules around cancellation, in general, for small-value, recurring subscriptions."
A Canadian company pleaded guilty last year for trapping buyers into a monthly subscription for health and dietary supplements, and was fined $15 million following an investigation by the Competition Bureau. But the bureau isn't a regulatory equivalent to the stricter Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., as Canada's consumer market is much smaller, said Levinter.
Horror stories led the U.S. federal regulator to ramp up its enforcement measures in 2021, after several high-profile companies — from SiriusXM radio to Apple — faced lawsuits from customers who said the businesses had made subscriptions too difficult to cancel or had engaged in suspect auto-renewal practices.
That's why it's crucial that companies make it easy for customers to reach them with questions and concerns — and give them the ability to control their subscription packages, added Levinter.
"If you make it difficult for the customer to do that, you're going to end up in lots of trouble," he said.
'A black eye on the merchant'
Cutting up your credit card is a desperate measure. But most Canadians will have a more simple route to navigating unwanted subscription charges: they can ask their credit card company for a chargeback, in which a bank transfers money from the merchant's account back to the client.
"Chargebacks are a black eye on the merchant," said Levinter.
Businesses that accept Visa or Mastercard, for example, have a responsibility to keep their chargebacks below a certain threshold. If chargebacks spike up, that's bad news for the company.
"You can have your card processing shut off, meaning that as a company you won't be able to process Visa or MasterCard transactions anymore, and without the ability to process transactions, you have no business."
The process is a little bit murkier if you've made a purchase using a debit card, because a company can't protect you if you've shared your pin or somehow encouraged its unauthorized use.
Maybe you just want to cut back for the sake of your wallet. If so, tracking monthly expenses — poring over your credit card statements for an errant Spotify charge here or there — is the best way to catch money slipping through the cracks, Bowen said.
A whole host of subscription management apps have also emerged in recent years, from MySubscribe to Mint to Bobby.
But automatically renewable subscriptions are a two-way street.
"I think companies should have [the] responsibility of reminding consumers, 'Hey, your subscription is coming up, do you want to cancel?' and have an easy way to click that cancel button so that we can say 'thank you, goodbye,'" said Bowen. "It's been nice, but I'm gonna put my money to something else right now."
My opinion: Write down when your free or discounted subscription ends on the calendar so you can cancel it. I do that.
I would only subscribe to one streaming service at a time to watch a TV show or shows I really want to. I usually have enough TV shows and movies to watch that are saved on my DVR or I can get on Telus on Demand.
There is ctv.ca and the Global TV app where you can watch TV shows for free.
This week's theme is about how to save money. Here are the other 2 blog posts:
"Cheap date? Finding 'the one' on a budget when everything costs more"/ "How the high cost of living is shifting the dating scene"
Tracy's blog: "Cheap date? Finding 'the one' on a budget when everything costs more"/ "How the high cost of living is shifting the dating scene" (badcb.blogspot.com)
"How to Budget When You’re Broke"/ "How to recession-proof your finances right now"
My week:
Jan. 23, 2023 Comic Relief USA: I was checking what's on my Telus on Demand and I found this show about raising money for charity:
Pickled: Everything to Know About the Stephen Colbert-Hosted Special (movieweb.com)
WHAT WE DO
Comic Relief US is committed to breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Through the power of entertainment we drive awareness and amplify the voices of the most under-resourced communities.
Since its launch in the US in 2015, Comic Relief US has fundraised over $330 million in total, with $275 million raised through its signature Red Nose Day campaign.
Comic Relief US invests in nonprofit and community-led organizations with programs focused on tackling the root causes and consequences of poverty and social injustice. We support initiatives and policies that advance economic opportunity and leadership development in communities directly impacted by intergenerational poverty.
As a connector and convener, we engage the public, corporate and nonprofit partners to raise awareness and funds to address the world's most pressing social issues.
My opinion: I sent this to my friend Barbilee because she likes pickleball. She emailed a thumbs up.
Jan. 25, 2023 "Postmedia to lay off 11% of editorial staff, sources say": Today I found this on CBC news:
Newspaper conglomerates including Postmedia have long been struggling with dwindling print subscriber numbers, the rise of big tech companies that have eaten into media profits and more advertising moving online from print.
"The unassailable truth is that the print audience is going away, it's a demographic that's not being replaced by another readership audience who consumes news in the same way,'' said Nott on Tuesday.
"It's clear that our advertisers have moved from print to digital. It's clear that in the digital space we're up against some behemoth that make it very competitive and very difficult for us.''
In recent years, Postmedia has coped by closing a number of small-town newspapers, reducing print production of some of its titles and resorting to layoffs and voluntary buyouts to manage costs.
Asked whether Postmedia itself will exist in the coming years, Nott said, "I think there's every reason for hope and that we will exist three to five years from now."
Postmedia to lay off 11% of editorial staff, sources say | CBC News
Jan. 26, 2023 "Manitoba government to hand out cheques to help with rising food, fuel costs": Today I found this article by Rachel Bergen on CBC:
The Manitoba government is cutting $225 and $375 cheques as part of a new affordability package billed as a carbon tax relief fund, intended to help people make ends meet in a time of high food and fuel costs, the premier says.
"It is getting hard to afford the basic necessities. We hear Manitobans when they say they can they can hardly afford to put gas in their cars," Premier Heather Stefanson said at a news conference on Thursday.
The $200-million fund will benefit roughly 700,000 people older than 18 who lived in the province on Dec. 31, 2021, and whose family net income that year was less than $175,000, with or without children.
Manitoba government to hand out cheques to help with rising food, fuel costs | CBC News
My opinion: This is good to help people afford the cost of living like food.
There were a lot of negative comments about how Heather Stefanson is buying votes.
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