Step 1: Gather your statements (2 minutes)
Open the last two to three months of statements for every card and bank account you use, for work and for personal spending. Subscriptions hide in more places than most people expect, so also check:
- App-store subscriptions. On an iPhone, look under Settings, your name, then Subscriptions. On Android, open the Google Play Store, tap your profile, then Payments & subscriptions. (Menu names change between versions.)
- PayPal and other payment apps that keep a list of recurring payments.
- Your email inbox. Search for words like “receipt”, “subscription”, “trial” and “renews”. This catches annual charges that did not appear in the last few months.
Step 2: Scan for repeating charges (4 minutes)
Look for the same merchant appearing at regular intervals. Monthly charges are easy to spot. Annual ones are not, because they appear once a year, so look back twelve months if your bank lets you. Be ready for names that do not match the product. Billing descriptors are often a parent company or an abbreviation, so search your inbox for the amount if a charge is unfamiliar.
Step 3: Write each one down (3 minutes)
For every subscription, record the same five things so you can compare them fairly:
| Name | Price | Billed | Next renewal | Who uses it, and for what |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example: design tool | $19.00 | Monthly | Nov 12 | Me, social graphics |
| Example: domain and hosting | $180.00 | Annual | Mar 3 | Whole team, company site |
Made-up examples to show the format.
Convert annual prices to a monthly figure by dividing by twelve ($180 a year is $15 a month). That lets you rank everything on the same scale and see what the whole pile costs.
Step 4: Mark each one Keep, Cancel or Review (3 minutes)
- Keep if you used it in the last 30 days and it is worth the price.
- Cancel if you have not used it in 30 days or more, or if another tool you already pay for does the same job.
- Review if you use it occasionally or you are not sure. Put a date on it, usually a month away, and decide then.
A quick test for the in-between ones: if this charged me today for the first time, would I sign up? If the honest answer is no, it belongs in Cancel.
Step 5: Act and set reminders (3 minutes)
Cancel anything marked Cancel before its next renewal date, and save a screenshot or email of each cancellation confirmation. Then, for every Keep and Review item, add a calendar reminder a week before it renews, so you make a decision instead of letting the charge decide for you. For annual plans, our 30-7-3-1 reminder schedule shows what to do at each point.
Add up what you save
Total the monthly cost of everything you cancelled, then multiply by twelve. As an example, cancelling three tools at $12, $19 and $29 a month saves $60 a month, which is $720 a year. Small subscriptions are easy to dismiss one at a time, but the yearly total is the number worth looking at.
Make it a habit
- Repeat every quarter. Put a repeating event in your calendar. Later audits take a fraction of the time, because you are only checking for new charges.
- Run it for your team too. Ask each person to list the tools they pay for or use, then merge the lists. Shared tools are where duplicates pile up. See how to find duplicate subscriptions.
- Check before you buy. Before adding a new tool, look at your list and ask whether you already own something that does the job.