One of the easiest ways that you can manage what information gets to you on a day to day basis is through subscription services. I like this because It means that (for me) I don’t have to go searching for things, everything I need comes to me. Either through e-mail or some presets I have on my browser, I can get everything I need. The only problem that I have is that you need to make sure that you are managing what subscriptions you have. They all cost money, and it’s straightforward to subscribe to something for a couple of months and then forget about it.
1) Try the free demo first – Most subscription services (and I’m leaving the video service like Netflix and Disney+ out of this) can try out their service for a while before you buy. It’s critical because there is nothing worse than paying for something that you can’t try out before and then realizing that you don’t want it in the first place. Would you buy a car without doing a test drive? The same thing is true with programs and subscription services. If you can try it out, give it a try. If it doesn’t work out or you don’t like it, no harm, no foul. If you do like it, however, it’s entirely possible that when you start paying for the service, there will be features that you can unlock.
2) Auto-renewals CAN be convenient, but also can be very detrimental – when you do sign up for a paid version of a particular service (assuming you’re through the trial period) then you need to make sure that you are aware of which services you’re paying for and how much they cost. If I’m being perfectly honest, there are times where I lose track of what’s where, but what I’ve done is create a list of what services I’m paying for and, more importantly, where I subscribed from. Usually, the auto-renewal happens; I’m normally good with it, but every once and a while, I get an auto-renewal notification for something that I thought I had cancelled.
3) Make sure you cancel from where you signed up – If you want to cancel a subscription service, you need to make sure you cancel it from the same place that you signed up from. This story was told to me by one of my readers. This person (Let’s call him “Dave”) had subscribed through his device to an online newspaper. Sometime later, he didn’t want the subscription anymore, so he went online and cancelled the subscription from the newspaper’s website and then deleted the app. Here’s the thing; Because he didn’t subscribe from the site, he didn’t cancel his subscription. He subscribed through iTunes, so that’s where the money was going. He found out the next billing period that he was still subscribed to the news service. He had to re-download the app, cancel his subscription (which he still had) and shut down his account from the app. If you have a subscription service through an app that you don’t want anymore, make sure you go to where you got the subscription from to cancel it. If you got it from a website, go there, if you subscribed from an app on your phones, you would likely have to go to that app and unsubscribe before you can get rid of it.
Subscription services are great. I particularly like them because it means that I have access to a wide variety of services and programs that I don’t have to worry about getting billed for, as it happens automatically. If you wanted to have some subscription services, I would highly advise it. I would, however, also suggest that you keep an eye on what you’re subscribing to. If you properly manage what subscriptions you have, then you will not be surprised when you get billed for them.
What subscriptions do you have?
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