Personal Finance

This is Your Reminder to Do an Annual Subscriptions Audit

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Written by Dan Miller
Published Jan 21, 2022 - [Updated Mar 29, 2022]
2 min read
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Checking on all of your regular expenses is an important part of keeping your finances healthy. Too often, people sign up for a monthly subscription for a gym membership, subscription box, or premium membership and then stop using it. Without regularly keeping track of what you’re spending money on, you can easily find yourself spending hundreds of dollars a month on things you’re no longer using.

What is a Subscriptions Audit?

A subscription audit refers to the process of going through all of your monthly subscriptions. Sometimes the hardest part of a subscription audit is figuring out what all of the different monthly subscriptions even are. Once you have a list of your monthly subscriptions and how much they cost each month, you can decide which are still providing you value. Finally, you can cancel any that you’re no longer using.

Using Mint’s Automatic Subscription Tracking

It can be hard to even figure out what all of your monthly subscriptions are. That’s where Mint’s Automatic Subscription Tracking service comes in. As long as you have connected the bank or credit card that you use to pay your subscription to Mint, the automatic subscription tracker will keep track of it. You can see all of your subscriptions in one place so you have better control of your spending. And if prices change, you’ll automatically get a notification — then you can decide if the higher price is still worth it for you.

Check your other recurring bills as well

While you’re doing your subscription audit, you’ll want to check on your other recurring bills as well. You might not think of things like your insurance, cell phone or utilities as subscriptions, but anything that you pay on a regular basis can be considered a subscription. And while you might not ever cancel your Internet or cell phone bill, it is still a good idea to regularly review these types of recurring expenses.

How you check on your recurring bills will depend on what kind of bill or recurring payment it is. In some cases your only decision will be to decide to cancel or not. For utilities or insurance, you may be able to choose another supplier or renegotiate your bill.

If renegotiating your bill sounds like too much of a chore, you’re in luck, the Mint app has a new bill negotiation feature with BillShark. They’ll negotiate for you and if they don’t save you money, you won’t give them a thing.

Being aware of all of your finances can help you keep your expenses low and put you on the road to a solid financial footing.

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Dan Miller is a freelance writer and founder of PointsWithACrew.com, a site that helps families to travel for free / cheap. His home base is in Cincinnati, but he tries to travel the world as much as possible with his wife and 6 kids. More from Dan Miller