The feeling of disappointment when you look at your bank balance and hope to see the money for some concert tickets or for that new video game you bought recently is terrible. However, the disappointment becomes even greater when you realize that you have been charged 14.99 dollars by some streaming service that you have forgotten to unsubscribe. Indeed, this situation seems to be exactly like having a hole in your pocket.
All these companies build their subscription models to be sticky. They rely on your ignorance regarding the dates of renewal. You are expected to forget as you are too busy with your homework, basketball team or Tik-Toks. Therefore, setting up a protection system to prevent you from unexpected charges becomes really necessary. We are going to tell you how to make this wall around your money impervious.
The Calendar Trick
First of all, everybody has a calendar application on his/her smartphone. The best way to protect yourself from getting those charges is simply to use your existing application. In case you sign up for some free trial on any website such as Crunchyroll or Hulu, you should immediately open your calendar and not wait for later as you will forget.
The next step is to set up the alert for 2 days before the end of the trial period. For example, if you sign up for the trial for 7 days on Tuesday, you should set the alarm for Sunday. This will give you additional buffer zone as you should have enough time to log in and unsubscribe before the end of this period. Make sure that your event name is as loud and clear as possible. "CANCEL SPOTIFY PREMIUM" will be much better than just "Reminder".
Using the Power of Your Bank
Another powerful tool which you can use is a mobile banking application of your bank. Most of them have a feature for setting up transaction alerts. You should activate this feature immediately.
Open settings in your banking application and try to find the "Notifications" or "Alerts". Usually, you will have an opportunity to set up notifications which will inform you about every time when a transaction occurs on your bank account. Thus, if you see some unexpected deduction of 9.99 dollars made by Adobe or Canva, you will know that something is wrong. Of course, this feature will help you to spot the situations in which you forget to cancel your subscription. Moreover, it will allow you to detect any fraudulent attempt to steal your card number.
Third-Party Subscription Management Applications
In case you have too many subscriptions, the situation can become really confusing. Here third-party managers may help you. Applications like Rocket Money or Trim can help you to analyze your bank statement in order to find all your subscriptions.
Most of these managers provide you with the dashboard where you will see all the expenses that occur each month. Some of them even cancel the subscriptions automatically for you. In exchange, they will take some money for using the premium services. However, the basic features remain absolutely free. It is like having a personal financial assistant in your phone.
Creating Virtual Card Is a Must
This trick is used mostly by professionals. There are some services like Privacy.com that allow you to create virtual credit card. You will link your bank account to this service and the system will generate temporary card number for you.
What makes this system special? First of all, you can set spending limit for this virtual card. In case you sign up for a free trial of Adobe Creative Cloud, set the spending limit to 0.01. When the trial period will be over and Adobe will want to charge you 54.99 dollars, the transaction will be declined. This is absolutely the safest method to use the services for free trial period without any risks.
Understanding The Psychology
It is quite useful to understand why does this happen. All the companies use some psychology tricks when they design the subscription system. This method is called "Dark Patterns". Indeed, it is really easy to sign up for some service. Usually, it requires only one click.
However, it should be difficult to unsubscribe. They will hide the "Cancel" button in the settings menu. Also, you will probably have to call a specific phone number in order to unsubscribe during work hours. All this friction is done in order to make you give up. The companies hope that you will get frustrated and keep paying for their services. Knowing this, you will pay more attention to your subscriptions and treat every sign-up as a trap.
The Monthly Audit
Of course, it is really important to check your transactions regularly. You should pick up a day, for example, the first day of the month or payday. During 10 minutes you should check your bank statement.
Look carefully at all the charges which you do not recognize. Sometimes the name of the company that charges you is changed. Netflix will appear as NFLX or something like this. If you see such an unusual charge, you should try to find the name of the company immediately on Google. If you still cannot determine which company it is, contact your bank and they will help you to figure it out. Developing such a habit will be really useful for you in the future and will teach you how to manage your finances properly.
How to Deal With Annual Plans
In addition to monthly plans, there is one more problem – annual plans. Charges for annual plans are even bigger and may feel as an earthquake if you do not have enough money. However, in this case, there is another trick that you should apply.
In order to avoid the surprise deduction of 100 dollars made by PlayStation Plus, for example, you should create your sinking fund. This term means that you should save a little bit every month. If you subscribe for some annual service for 120 dollars per year, put 10 dollars in the separate savings account. You should label this account as "Subscriptions". In case you have to pay the money, you already have it on your account. This trick can be automated in your banking application.
The Nuclear Option
Sometimes, it just becomes impossible to deal with so many subscriptions. You have Netflix, Disney Plus, Xbox Game Pass and who knows what else. In this case, you should use a nuclear option. Cancel everything. Yes, all of it. Just unsubscribe from all the services. Be sure that you will survive without Spotify Premium for some time and you will listen to ads for some period. When you will have a clean slate, you can start subscribing again only to the services which you will miss.
Conclusion
Indeed, protecting yourself from the unexpected charges is not paranoia. It is about being aware of what is happening with your money. The whole digital economy is based on the fact that you will spend some small amounts of money regularly. It is built in order to make you a passive consumer of their services.
However, using the tricks that we described above, you will take back the control and become a manager of your resources. This extra money can be used for something more important for you, such as saving money for the car or buying some concert tickets.
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