August Part 1 - Subscriptions

Week One

Usually, my images are from magicalstock.art. However, this week’s photo is courtesy of freestocks on Unsplash.

Welcome to Part 1 of August’s focus inside The Simplified Year!
This week, we’re untangling one of the sneakiest forms of financial clutter: subscriptions and recurring payments.

You know the ones. They quietly auto-renew in the background while you’re busy living your life, slowly siphoning money (and energy) out of your bank account. They surprise you. They mess up your not-so-carefully-laid-plans.

Focusing on this isn’t intended to create guilt or to force you to cut joy from your budget. But creating clarity and awareness about how much you’re actually spending on subscriptions, and having a plan (whether that’s an up-to-date budget, or a list on your fridge) changes the game.

No more surprises. And you might just decide the amount you’re spending isn’t really bringing you joy anymore, too.

Is this something you struggle with?

This Week’s Focus: Subscriptions

This week we’re starting with a full audit of your recurring payments: streaming services, newsletters, business tools, apps, memberships, monthly donations, digital products, and all the sneaky little charges that add up faster than you think.

Some you forgot about the moment you signed up for them, some you meant to cancel ages ago and every time they pop up you’re annoyed but busy with something else and then you forget, again... Some you’ve kept “just in case” or because you won’t get that same price again if you pause or cancel and come back.

And some still light you up when you remember they exist; those might be worth keeping - hell, they all might! But let’s actually find out, and be sure from now on.

Why This Matters (Mindset Reset)

Subscriptions feel like small potatoes.
$9.99 here, $17.99 there, maybe a couple yearly charges you forget until they drop like a surprise meteor from the sky.

But here’s the deal: most of us are leaking WAY more energy and money here than we realize.

And when things are financially tight, or even just energetically overwhelming, this is one of the simplest places to start creating space. Free up some money and release a few things you no longer have to keep in your mind.

It took me months to list all of mine. Not because I was ignoring it (well… maybe a little), but because I legitimately couldn’t remember where (and what) they all were. They weren’t all on the same cards or coming out of the same accounts. Some were on PayPal, some on Stripe. Some were billed annually, and some I couldn’t tell what they were because someone named their subscription something that didn’t label the actual thing I was buying. I’d have to deep dive into apple purchases through iTunes to find it, and most of the time I’d get sidetracked (good ole’ ADHD) before I ever figured it out. Some showed up in email receipts I hadn’t opened. All in all it was a total headache.

When I finally sat down and tracked them all I was shocked. Like, I-could’ve-booked-a-vacation shocked.

That clarity made it so much easier to let a bunch go with no drama, and no guilt. Just awareness and empowered decisions. I could afford it, once I had the plan and reminders in place, but when I saw the big picture of them all at once I didn’t want to anymore.