Tenner Week March 2023: Day 2

It’s Day Two of the March Tenner Week budgeting challenge. How did you get on yesterday? Today’s quick activity is called ‘I feel so… unused‘ and we’re going to concentrate on any paid subscriptions that you might be signed up to.

So today let’s:

1. Look at exactly what you’re subscribed to.
2. Decide whether it fits your needs or it doesn’t.
3. Modify or cancel one or more subscrptions.

There are all kinds of subscriptions potentially hiding away in our personal finances and they can be weekly, monthly or annual. I’m excluding general household bills here today, but that still might leave the following:

• The wide range of paid streaming services for film and TV
• Music streaming services
• Monthly beauty boxes
• Amazon UK ‘subscribe & save’ for various items
• Magazines, papers, journals
• Paid newsletters etc on Substack
• Fruit & veg delivery boxes
• Regular treat boxes such as snacks, booze, books, stationery etc
• Gym memberships (be careful – these can actually be *credit agreements*)
• Paid apps for fitness, fertility, weight loss, and so on
• Professional memberships
• Club memberships of all kinds
• Data storage, software, webhosting, domain registrations etc
• and many more…

Free subscriptions don’t count here, of course.

You might need to go back up to 12 months through your financial records, in case of annual subscriptions that can sort of surprise us out of the blue.

Now, be honest – is there anything here that you really don’t use much but still like? Can you streamline it, move to a different package, try a money-off code or find a cheaper provider? If so, use today to research getting a better deal. Also, you may well find that haggling with an existing provider will get you a much lower bill for exactly the same thing, as long as you want to keep it.

If you’re oversubscribed to lots of different similar things, for example movie and TV streaming services, could you cut back to just one for a few months? I know more than one person who rotates between Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime, just catching up on their handful of favourite shows.

Another way to temporarily cut back is to use the ‘holiday’ function on scheduled deliveries. I regularly miss a week or a month with some of my favourite subscriptions, including a winter veg delivery box that I won’t be having dropped off this week.

And finally, cancellation time. The biggest personal finance ‘win’ here is to find something you no longer use, need, want or like and cancel it completely. Read the small print before cancelling, as there may be a fee to pay if you don’t do it in the correct way. Gym memberships are the worst for this, so if there’s one you no longer use and you aren’t likely to go back then check properly for the best way to terminate the contract or credit agreement.

[By the way, if you don’t have any subscriptions to alter or cancel today, you might like to look for other unused items around your home. Maybe you could sell them, and if not perhaps you could give them away to make more space.]

What’s happening here

I have a couple of monthly software subscriptions that I think are no longer competitive, so I’ll be looking for better deals on my tea break today. Hopefully spending a few minutes on research will find me a cheaper bill or maybe more whistles and bells for the same price. We’ll see. Customer loyalty is rarely rewarded…

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day, and as we’re still near the start of the week I’m hoping to keep things simple today too. I’ll try to get out for a walk if there’s a break in the forecasted rain, and make a quick and easy dinner this evening from things in the freezer and fridge. The plan is to stay in and watch a downloaded movie, maybe one of the award-winning ones that we didn’t get around to watching last year.

Total spent so far: £0.00.

Do you think you’ll find any subscriptions to cancel or cut back on? Let me know if you find anything – the weirder the better!