Feel the creep? Subscription prices on the rise, often go undetected
Subscriptions have become a way of life. Today we pay a monthly or annual charge for everything from streaming channels to shopping sites and gym memberships, but the costs are adding up.
A CNET Money survey found the average American is spending more than $1,000 a year on subscriptions and it's getting more expensive. 67% of adults have seen the price of one or more of their subscriptions increase in the last year.
"I want YouTube without ads, I want Spotify without ads so whatever I need to pay for to have those I'm going to pay," said Robby Cruz, who has at least five subscriptions.
Many people will test a new subscription with a free trial, but the survey found nearly half of those people forget to cancel and end up getting charged.
"Millennials were the most forgetful 65% of them saying that they had forgotten to cancel a free trial, boomers were the most on top of it, just 28%," said CNET Money Senior Editor Nick Wolny.
Other results from CNET:
- 12% say subscriptions are outside of their budget, but still pay for them
- 24% they think they're overpaying for subscriptions
- 25% canceled one or more subscriptions because prices increased
How to save money
Wolny recommends keeping a close eye on bank and credit card statements to make sure you're not paying for something you don't want.
"See what you actually paid for, and then make a decision about whether you want to keep that service. Maybe you want to downgrade that service or cancel it altogether," he said.
Wolny said many people also save money by adjusting which subscriptions they are using.
"If they have four or five different streaming services that they like, maybe they only subscribe to one or two of them at a time and they go on a blitz and they watch a lot of that content. And then they cancel that subscription. You know, at least for now the good thing about streamers is that it's pretty easy to cancel your membership. It's pretty easy to restart your membership," he said.
There are budgeting apps that will track your subscriptions and alert you of a price hike, but many of those apps also charge a subscription.