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7 Subscriptions You're Paying For (But Never Use) — I Found $187/Month - Meet Elesh — Smart Money Tips
7 Subscriptions You’re Paying For (But Never Use) — I Found $187/Month
I found out I was paying $14.99 a month for a cloud storage service I hadn’t opened in 11 months. I found it because my credit card expired and the payment failed, and the email bounced. If my card hadn’t expired, I’d still be paying for something I literally never thought about.
That got me curious. I pulled my bank statements for the last 12 months and highlighted every recurring charge. Then I crossed out the ones I genuinely used. What was left was disgusting — $187 a month in subscriptions I’d forgotten about. Two thousand two hundred forty-four dollars a year, gone, for things I didn’t want, didn’t need, and in some cases didn’t even remember buying.
I went through every single one and this is the list of the worst offenders. The subscriptions that are designed to make you forget they exist.
The 7 Subscriptions You’re Paying For (But Never Use)
1. The Cloud Storage You Bought Once and Forgot
iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive — most people pay for at least two. I had Dropbox Plus ($11.99/mo) AND Google Drive 200GB ($2.99/mo). The Dropbox account had 23 GB used out of 2 TB. The Google Drive had 47 GB used. I was paying $14.98 a month for storage I was using less than 3% of.
The fix: Pick one. If you’re on Apple, iCloud integrates with everything. If you’re not, Google Drive works everywhere. $11.99 saved per month = $143.88 a year.
2. The Gym Membership You Told Yourself You’d Use
This is the classic. I signed up for a $49/month gym in January 2024 with big plans. By March, I’d stopped going. But I kept paying until October, when I finally admitted defeat. That’s $392 for eight months of guilt.
The fix: If you haven’t gone in 30 days, cancel. You’re not going to start tomorrow. Switch to free exercise — running, bodyweight workouts, YouTube fitness channels. $49 saved per month = $588 a year.
3. The Streaming Service Nobody in Your House Watches
I counted five streaming subscriptions in my house at one point. Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, and a Prime Video membership I forgot came with Amazon Prime. The one we actually watched? Netflix. The others combined for maybe three hours of use in a month. That’s $32/month for content we didn’t watch.
The fix: Rotate. Subscribe to one, binge what you want, cancel, move to the next. There’s nothing on these platforms that requires you to have all of them at once. $32 saved per month = $384 a year.
4. The “Free Trial” You Forgot to Cancel
I signed up for a 7-day free trial of a budgeting app (ironic, I know). Forgot to cancel. Three months later I’d paid $44.85 for an app I used exactly once. The business model of half the apps in existence is built on people forgetting to cancel trials.
The fix: When you sign up for a free trial, set a calendar reminder for the day BEFORE it charges. Or use a virtual card number (like Privacy.com) that expires after a single use. Either way, don’t trust your memory — I promise you, it’s not as good as you think.
5. The Domain Name You Bought for a Project That Never Launched
for a Project That Never Launched
I have five domains registered. One has a website on it. The other four are sitting there, costing me $9-$15 each per year, pointing at nothing. That’s roughly $48/year for digital real estate I’m not developing. I’ve had one of them since 2019 — that’s $70+ spent on a single unused domain.
The fix: Set a deadline. If you haven’t built anything on the domain in 90 days, let it expire or list it for sale. A domain that’s just sitting is not an investment — it’s a recurring expense.
6. The SaaS Tool You Installed Once
I paid $29/month for a project management tool for 14 months before realizing I’d never actually invited my team to it. I was the only user. I was assigning tasks to myself that I was never going to do. SaaS companies love this — you sign up, use it once, and the monthly charge disappears into your statement like a ghost.
The fix: Every three months, review your bank statements for recurring charges. If you can’t remember what the service does, cancel it. If it turns out you need it, you can always resubscribe. $29 saved per month = $348 a year.
7. The Insurance You’re Double-Paying For
This one hurt. I had renters insurance through my building’s recommended provider AND a separate policy I’d bought online. Two policies covering the same stuff. The building one was $18/month, the other was $14/month. I paid $32/month for two years — $768 — for double coverage I didn’t need.
The fix: Once a year, review all your insurance policies. Check for overlaps, out-of-date coverage, or policies that auto-renewed without you noticing. The insurance industry counts on you not checking.
The funny thing is, once I started looking, I found more. A magazine subscription I hadn’t read in a year. A premium weather app (why?). A “VIP” membership for a website I visited twice. The total kept growing. I ended up cancelling 11 subscriptions that day and saving $187/month. That’s a car payment for some people.
### Quick TL;DR
I found $187/month in forgotten subscriptions — that’s $2,244/year wasted
The worst: double cloud storage, unused gym memberships, and SaaS tools nobody uses
Set calendar reminders for free trials, review your statements quarterly, and cancel anything you haven’t used in 30 days
I went through my own bank statements to write this list. Every subscription on here is one I personally paid for. The total I found was embarrassing enough that I now set a quarterly calendar reminder to check recurring charges.
