I came across two announcements the other day, and their timing made me a little anxious.
One was about discovery+: for existing subscribers, the new prices take effect on the first billing date on or after November 12. The ad-supported plan is going from $5.99 to $6.99, and the ad-free plan from $9.99 to $11.99. New subscribers have been paying the new prices since October 13. The other was about Disney+ and Hulu: Fire TV users have until November 11 to accept the new prices. Disney+ without ads is going from $18.99 to $21.49. If you don’t accept, your subscription ends immediately.
Taken separately, neither of these two announcements sounds alarming. A dollar or two, right? But when I did the math, I realized I could barely keep track of all the streaming services that have raised prices this year: Netflix raised prices across the board in March, Peacock in August, Apple TV went up to $14.99 at the end of August, Disney+ raised prices in September, and now discovery+ is joining them. Going ad-free on all five major platforms costs about $94 a month, or more than $1,100 a year. This is no longer a matter of “spending two bucks more.”
What really made me feel something was off was realizing I had no idea when or which card these charges were coming from.
My subscriptions were scattered across four or five places: some were billed through app stores, some charged directly through websites, and some were linked to one card while others were linked to another. I’d glance at price increase notices in my inbox and move on; I never kept track of the renewal dates. Then the bill would arrive with a different amount, and I’d realize too late—oh, they’ve been charging me at the new price since this month. Even more awkwardly, once a card expired and I got a new one, several subscription payments failed one after another, and the services were cut off. That’s when I realized I couldn’t even say which subscriptions were linked to which cards.
The price increase itself isn’t the most costly part. What costs you is when it happens and you’re not paying attention.
After that, I got into the habit of spending twenty minutes reviewing my subscriptions whenever I heard about a price increase. The process is simple—just four steps.
Step one: Go through your bills from the past three months and list every automatic payment in a table. Each row needs just four things: the platform name, the monthly cost, the date of the next charge, and which card or payment channel it comes from. This step takes the most time, but it’s also the most worthwhile. Many people discover for the first time that they’re paying for two services with overlapping features, or that a subscription they thought they’d canceled long ago is still charging them.
Step two: Check the new price. Pull up the price increase notices you’ve received recently and go through them one by one: What’s the new price? Which billing date does it take effect from? Is there a grace period for existing subscribers? In the case of discovery+ this time, existing subscribers will be charged the new price starting with their first billing date on or after November 12. So people with different billing dates will feel the increase at different times. Write that date in your table first, and the price increase is no longer something that “suddenly happens one day”—it’s a date you can see coming.
Step three: Set a reminder for each renewal date. I set one reminder three days before renewal, then ask myself again the day before it’s due: Do I still want this next month? I use just one criterion: How many times did I open it last month? If the answer is “I can’t remember,” I cancel it for now. If I really want to use it again, I can subscribe again later. The biggest risk with subscriptions isn’t that they’re expensive—it’s “forgetting they’re charging you.”
Step four: Consolidate your payments. If you can use the same card, try to use the same card for everything; if you can use the same payment channel, try to use the same one. That way, you only need to check one bill each month to review all your subscriptions. And when you change cards, you only have to update one place, instead of going through more than a dozen platforms one by one like I did last time.
Once you’ve done all this, subscriptions go from “waiting for the bill each month to tell me how much I spent” to “knowing in advance how much will be charged next month, when it’ll be charged, and where it’ll come from.” Prices will still go up, but at least they won’t go up without you noticing.
These days, I use a tool to keep this table up to date. I use PayAll to view subscriptions across multiple cards side by side and organize renewal dates and expiration reminders. Once I authorize it, it helps me keep these dates in order within the permissions I’ve set. Whether to renew is still up to me. It doesn’t make decisions for me; it just helps me see all the charges clearly before I decide.
November 12 is the day after tomorrow. If you also have subscriptions spread across different cards and payment channels, why not spend twenty minutes tonight reviewing the renewal dates? You can’t stop prices from going up, but at least don’t let it happen without your knowledge.
(The author is affiliated with the product mentioned in this article. This is a personal account of their experience and does not constitute investment or financial advice.)