Is your credit card being haunted by the ghosts of subscriptions past?
If you haven’t done a serious credit card review in a while, you may be surprised to see how many charges are automatically showing up on your credit card every every month and every year. No, they’re not necessarily fraudulent. Most likely, they’re charges you legitimately signed up for long ago, and then never thought about again. Netflix; a gym membership from an old address; subscriptions to professional publications; insurance for your pet; maybe a home alarm system; a cloud storage account or two, a few domain names reserved for those websites you always planned to build for fun… You may not notice right away, but automatic charges like these all add up, especially over time. The expenses may be fine if you truly need and can afford them, but often, it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind.
A faster solution to cancelling unwanted subscriptions
Sure, you can catalog all your subscriptions manually and then personally contact each company, one by one, to cancel the subscriptions you no longer want…. But if you’re like me, and always looking for an easier way, then you may be excited to learn about some new services that will now handle the entire task for you.
According to CNN Money, “a lot of people are automatically paying for services they signed up for long ago and then forgot about” – but two new startups have stepped in to provide FREE turnkey solutions:
- Trim. Trim scans your transactions on a recurring basis and cancels anything you don’t want to keep paying for. They do charge a $6 fee for “hard to cancel” subscriptions – for example, the ones that require sending certified mail or getting on the phone with someone. For most subscriptions, all you do is authorize cancellation via text message. Trim does the rest.
- Truebill. Truebill asks you to connect your accounts to their system one time; after that, they monitor your statements and send you monthly email summaries to show you what you’re being charged for. You can then cancel using their “one click cancellation system” – no more waiting on hold to do it yourself. According to Truebill’s website, the average user saves $512 by cancelling unwanted subscriptions.
I’m intrigued by both services but currently leaning towards Trim, because given a choice, I prefer to dealing with to-dos via text vs. email. My inbox is full enough most days!
If you try either of these services, please come back and let us know what you think of them – and how much you save.
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