A 20-minute subscription audit

Most people have never seen all of their subscriptions in one place. Each one was a small, reasonable decision at the time, and the total was never shown to anyone. An audit is just putting them on one page and looking.

This takes about twenty minutes the first time and five minutes a quarter after that. A spreadsheet is fine. A notes app is fine. What matters is that the list exists and has a date on it.

Minute 0 to 10: build the list

Search your inbox for receipts, check the app-store subscription screens on your phone, and export three months of statements. The full method is in our guide to finding every subscription; the short version is that those three places hold all of them.

For each one, write the name, the price, and whether it's monthly or yearly. Don't skip the small ones. The small ones are the whole problem.

Minute 10 to 14: price everything per year

Monthly prices are designed to feel small. Multiply each by twelve and write that number next to it. Then add the column. The total is usually the moment the audit starts to feel worth doing.

Zeno's ledger shows this as committed per month and the yearly figure beside it, so the total is always in view rather than something you work out once and forget.

Minute 14 to 17: one question per line

For each subscription, ask when you last used it. Not whether you like it, or whether you might use it. When. If the honest answer is more than three months ago, mark it. That's the cancel list, and it's usually shorter than you fear and more expensive than you'd guess.

Two more marks are worth making:

• Duplicates: two services doing the same job (two cloud storage plans, two music apps). Keep one.
• Wrong tier: a plan with features you don't use. Downgrading is a cancellation you don't have to feel bad about.

Minute 17 to 20: cancel, and set the reminders

Cancel the marked ones now, while the list is open, using a guide rather than hunting through settings. Zeno's guides cover 509 services with the direct link to each cancellation page. For anything that fights you with offers or a pause button, decline and keep the confirmation.

For everything you're keeping, write the next renewal date and put the yearly ones in your calendar a week ahead. A renewal you saw coming is a decision. One you didn't is a charge.

Three mistakes that undo an audit

Most audits fail afterwards, not during. The same three things catch almost everyone:

• Cancelling on the website when the plan is billed by Apple or Google. Store subscriptions are cancelled on the store's own subscription screen; the service's account page can't touch them, and neither can deleting the app.
• Trusting the "sorry to see you go" screen. Keep the confirmation email, and check that the next renewal date passes with no new charge. Until then it isn't cancelled, it's pending.
• Doing it once. Prices rise, trials get started, a family member adds something. A list that isn't revisited is a list from last year.

Every quarter: five minutes

Put a recurring reminder three months out. Next time, you're only checking what changed: new signups, trials, price rises. Most price rises arrive by email with a sentence you'll skim; the audit is where you notice that the number went up.

This is what Zeno keeps for you between audits: the list, the renewal dates, the reminders, and a flag when a price rises or a cancelled service charges again. It's built from receipts and statements you control, and it never asks for your bank login.