July 21, 2025 • 21 mins
Ever wonder where all of your money is going? Do you think there could be too many holes in your budget where money seems to leak out every month? You are not alone. And, there is hope. Let's talk about Subscription Creep and how it is The Hidden Budget Killer.
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(00:00):
Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today. Helloand welcome back to Catholic
(00:22):
money talk. Today, I want totalk about the hidden budget
killer subscription creep. Andthen, well, that was my, my poor
attempt at like, like, thathorror music kind of thing,
right? The anyway we're going totalk about subscription creep,
(00:43):
right, and why I believe that isa hidden budget killer that
happens to a lot of us. Butbefore we do that, let's say a
prayer in the name of the Fatherand of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father.
We thank you for this day. Wethank you for all the ways that
you love and bless us. Lord, weknow that you have an awesome
plan for us. Help us tosurrender our plan to your plan.
Lord, you know our needs. Youknow all the different
(01:05):
situations we find ourselves in.
Lord, just give us the strength,give us the grace. Allow us to
tap into that. Allow us to grabonto you. Lord, we know you are
close to us. We know you arebeside us. Continue to walk with
us. Lord, lead us to you. We askall this in Jesus name, amen, in
the name of the Father and ofthe Son and of the Holy Spirit,
(01:26):
Amen. So what is subscriptioncreep? Well, before we talk
about that, I just want to talkabout another topic really
quickly, and we're going tostart with lifestyle creep. This
is a common challenge, lifestylecreep. This is what happens when
our income increases and weallow our lifestyle to slowly
(01:48):
consume that increase, right?
It's when we allow expenses toslowly grow and take up more and
more and more of our income.
Right? Typically, it's ourmonthly income, and this happens
to all of us, and the sooner wecan identify it and address it,
the better off we are, and thebetter off we'll be at handling
our finances and achieving ourgoals. Lifestyle creep is what
(02:09):
happens when we don't have aplan that we're faithfully
executing and managing. And thisis so common. This is why two of
my first three podcast episodesever, right? If you look to the
beginning of my podcast, I hadintro to Catholic money talk.
The next two episodes were aboutlifestyle creep, how to identify
(02:30):
it and how to address it. It'sso important, it's it's also one
of the most downloaded topics,right? Having a few different
episodes, but those, when youadd up those, all those are like
the most popular downloadedepisodes that I have, because we
all struggle. This affects somany people, and it affects so
much because it has the abilityto quickly snowball into bigger
(02:53):
and bigger and bigger problems.
Let me give you a very quickexample. 22 years ago, when Tara
and I were first married, ourhousehold income was 45,000 a
year. That was the total betweenthe two of us. And I remember
thinking that when our householdincome would reach 100,000 a
year, we'd be loaded. We wouldhave so much extra money. Well,
10 years into our marriage, ourhousehold income, it was 100,000
(03:17):
and we felt more broke thanever. And when we began to look
into it, we found that we hadsaid yes to so many things and
not really prayerfullydiscerning anything. And the
cost that we were saying yes toslowly started to add up and add
up, and they snowballed until wehad found ourselves in just an
untenable situation, and that'swhen we realized that we had to
(03:40):
get the money stuff figured outand under control. And so this
idea of this slow creep, it canhappen to all of us, and if we
aren't mindful of it, it caneasily consume a big chunk of
our finances. Okay, so that'slifestyle creep. So what is
subscription creep, and why am Icalling it the hidden budget
(04:02):
killer? Well, let's first talkabout subscriptions. Right?
Subscriptions, you're probablyfamiliar with the term a
subscription is something wesign up for because we
experience or we anticipate thatwe'll receive some value from
it, right? Right? We we sign upto pay for the service, usually
on a recurring basis. Maybe it'smonthly. Sometimes it could be
(04:25):
annually. And some of the mostpopular subscriptions their
video, music, streamingservices, shopping, retail
services, maybe food or mealdelivery. We're surrounded by
them, right? Think Amazon Prime,Spotify, Netflix, right? I could
go on and on. Hello, fresh.
There's so many things. There'stons of them, and most of these,
(04:47):
this subscription problem, it'srelatively new, right? Let me
give you an example. Back 100years ago. No, not that far. Oh,
maybe 30 years ago. Yeah, if youwanted to watch a movie, right?
You're sitting at home, justfinished dinner. You're like,
oh, be great to watch a movietonight. We don't own any of the
movies we want, right? They'renot on our bookshelf in the VHS
(05:10):
cassette or the DVD. So you haveto get in the car and drive to
Blockbuster, right? Or HollywoodVideo, there were so many video
rental places, right? But youyou drive to Blockbuster, you
walk up and down the aisles,right, looking at all the VHS or
DVDs, right? And then you findthe one you want to pay. You
want to rent. You pay for it,you drive home, you watch it,
then you had to bring it backwithin a certain period of time,
(05:32):
or there could be late fees orother penalties. I remember when
Taryn and I, when we first gotmarried, Netflix was new, and it
had just come out with thisservice, you could sign up and
you would get a DVD in the mail,and whenever you mailed it back
in, they would send you a newDVD from the list from you would
create, like a list that youwanted to watch, and they would
(05:52):
send you the new one. And therewere different levels of service
of their membership, right? Youcould, you could have one DVD at
a time, and then you could havetwo DVDs at a time, or maybe
even up to three DVDs at a time.
There was another one red boxvideo that had popped up that
was like a vending machine, kindof standalone kiosk. You'd see
them outside grocery stores orother shopping centers, usually
(06:15):
in higher traffic areas. You'dwalk up to it, you'd literally
browse through it to see whatDVDs they had in this machine.
You'd pick one, you'd rent it,you take it home, watch it, then
you'd have to bring it back toany red box location to return
it right. Both of theseexamples, you had to physically
get there. You had to get in thecar and drive to it. And you
might only rent one or maybe twovideos a week, because it was a
(06:38):
lot of work to go out, get it,bring it back. Not super
convenient, right? So, so fastforward several years. Now we
have video streaming services.
You can pay a monthly fee andhave access to as many videos,
movies as you want, whenever youwant. You don't even have to get
up and drive there, right? Youcould. You could be laying in
(06:59):
bed. You just click, click onyour phone, and you're watching
a new movie and you want the thenext one in the episode or
series. Boom, you got it rightthere, right? And so for this
ease and convenience, you pay asubscription fee. It's usually
monthly. Maybe it has a discountif you pay for an entire year in
advance, but it's superconvenient. And you know, my
(07:20):
example, it's just for videos.
But the same is true with musicand so many other electronically
delivered things, and there'smany more, right? Amazon Prime,
it offers fast shipping, certaindeals, free digital content with
the Amazon Prime subscription,there's food subscription
services, whether it be grocerydelivery, prepared meals, you
know, meat, meat boxes, you canget clothing boxes. You get all
(07:41):
these things, these subscriptionservices where stuff just keeps
showing up at your door. Youdon't have to go anywhere, and
sometimes you can return itpretty easily if you don't want
it, right? Sometimes. But peopleare spending more and more for
these the convenience of theseservices, and there's so many
other subscriptions as well,right, new sites or other
content we're interested in, youknow, news, video games, sports,
(08:05):
Fitness, Health, some of themhave their own apps, and you
download it on your phone, andwe pay for the service. And in
the moment, we might find thatwe really feel we have a need or
a great desire to have access tothis content or service, but
maybe a couple weeks, months,days, maybe even just hours
removed. We're like, I don'tthink I really need this, but
(08:27):
there's so many othersubscription types out there.
You get the point. We findthere's a convenience or a need
for a particular service. Theysell it via subscription. We
sign up for it. So why dobusinesses offer it this way?
One, it gives them great,consistent income, right? If you
just think of you like gettingweekly or bi weekly or monthly
(08:48):
paychecks, right? Businesseslove to have recurring revenue,
right? So that's one of thereasons they do it. They're
trying to make money a monthlysubscription. It breaks down the
cost with smaller amount, makingit appear easy for us to pay for
it. And many times, you can paythrough a linked payment
service, right electronicwallet, a saved card on file, or
(09:10):
maybe through a financialservice like PayPal, they make
it super easy to pay. So we havea thought. We need it. We see
the cost. It doesn't seemsignificant. It's easy to
complete the purchase, and wenow have access to the content
or service we wanted. But nowwe've also signed up for a new
subscription.
(09:33):
Some of theyou know, one of the the
marketing that these companieswill have also be free trials,
right? However, we still need toput our financial info in so
that they can start charging usafter the free trial, if we
forget to cancel, if we decidewe don't want the service. Now,
I am not against subscriptions.
(09:53):
I just think you need to becareful to only subscribe to the
ones that you're actually goingto use, the ones that you
actually. Actually feel are apriority to you that align with
your goals and the ones you feelyou're actually receiving good
value from. And that should allbe decided within the context of
your prayerfully discernedbudget. Because here's the
(10:16):
problem, if you aren't careful,right, this this becomes that
hidden budget killer. You'llfind yourself signed up for
things that you don't really useor you don't really need. You'll
be wasting money that could havebeen spent on other things that
should have a higher priority.
That's why subscription creep isthe hidden budget killer. It
they eat up your money, takingaway from your budget. Your
(10:38):
budget is the blueprint forhitting your goals, right? This
is the steps you need to take.
This is how this month needs togo with my money for me to move
towards my goals. When thesubscription creep, when it
starts coming in, eating up ourdollars, we're not able to fund
the budget. We're not able tohit our goals, and it can be
frustrating and demoralizing. SoI'm going to give you just a
(11:02):
quick story. This is Story. Thisis just last week or two weeks
ago. Is a recent story about meusing a subscription right in
the desire for convenience andhow easy it is to sign up. So a
couple weeks ago, we're away fora week with friends in Delaware.
And the couple we were awaywith, they're big, big Yankees
baseball fans, and they'resitting there trying to figure
(11:23):
out how to watch the Yankeesgame that evening, and they
weren't able to figure out away. So I started to investigate
it. We personally the scarfones.
We have Verizon Fios, so Ilogged into my FiOS app and
attempted to view the game. Butsince we were out of our home
market, like our localgeographical area, the game was
blacked out, and we could notwatch it that way. So I thought,
(11:44):
Well, I think I've seen Yankeesgames in Amazon, like on Prime
Video. So I log in Amazon Primevideo, and I see, oh, here's the
Yankees game. And I click it andit says, in order to watch this,
you have to subscribe to the MLBTV subscription, and you get a
seven day trial for free. Andafter that, it's 2999
(12:07):
so I turned to my wife, Tara,and I said,
Look, how hard is it if we signup for this so that we can watch
a Yankees game, you know, for acouple days while we're here,
and then we cancel it. Like, howhard would that be? Because I
don't want to pay 2999 a month.
Nine a month just to havewatched, you know, two or three
Yankees games. And Taryn said,Oh, it's really easy through
(12:27):
Amazon. Just go ahead and signup and I'll cancel it today.
Like, tell me when you sign up.
Do it right now and then I'mgonna go right in and cancel the
subscription. She says,typically, they'll still give
you that seven day free trial touse it. I thought perfect. So we
signed up Taran then canceledit, and we're stable, able to
(12:48):
watch the game, right? We foundwe needed, we're able to use it,
and we canceled it before itbecame a problem. But as I just
kind of relayed that to you,it's a bit confusing and
complicated within the moment,like it was probably more brain
power than I was willing todevote to it at the time, but I
knew I had to be careful. I wastreading on thin ice, because I
didn't want to spend $30 in, youknow, that much of a second. And
(13:12):
there's been other times when Isign up and then I see the fee
come out, and I go, Oh man, Iforgot to cancel it. I go in and
cancel it. I try to get my moneyback, but it's usually gone, and
it can feel like a full timejob, or at least a part time
job, trying to keep track ofsubscriptions, canceling ones we
don't use, and we might not bethe only one accessing it. Might
(13:34):
our kids might have access tosomething, our spouse might have
access something. And so we needto have a plan to like, how do
we do this? And so having aconversation about it before we
just sign up for a subscriptionis a great kind of just check
right. A great moment to say,hey, is this something we really
want to do? But let's talk abouthow to identify the
subscriptions that we currentlyhave and then discern if we
(13:55):
should have them or not, andthen cancel the ones we don't.
Right? You might be surprisedwith what you find and tell you
a little story. A few years ago,I was working with a young
couple, and they weren't brokeor in a desperate situation.
They just felt that they weren'tsaving and investing enough
money, or they didn't think theywere saving and investing as
much money as they should bebased on how much their income
(14:17):
was. And so one of the firstthings I had them do was to go
through the last three months ofspending, right? So they looked
through their credit cardstatements. They looked through
their bank statements. Ireminded them, don't forget
about PayPal. Venmo Zelle, theylook through everything, and
they started to categorize allthese expenses to see what their
monthly average of spending was.
They found they had a lot ofsubscriptions. So I'm gonna give
(14:38):
you a quick synopsis. They hadthree different video
subscription services thataveraged a total of about $55
per month. They had $20 more permonth of music subscriptions,
then another two subscriptionsthat the wife she used for
health and fitness that totaled$60 Dollars a month. And he had
(14:59):
four different subscriptions,different sports apps that he
paid for annually. Right?
Because they started talkingabout these subscriptions, he
looked it up, and so he brokedown the monthly cost for those
four apps was a total of $33 permonth. They also had other
retail, shopping and home fooddelivery service subscriptions
(15:21):
that totaled $200 a month. Andwhen they added all of that up,
right, 55 plus 20, plus 60, plus33, plus 200 that's $368 that's
over 4400 per year, they wereshocked. They admitted that they
(15:43):
were using them all a littlehere and there, but they
couldn't believe the totaldollar amount. And then I asked
them, I love asking thisquestion, because it makes
people like if they're notfeeling great, they feel a
little bit worse. I said, Howlong do you think you've been
paying for all these and theyadmitted that it's probably been
over three years for most ofthem.
So that's over $12,000spent on these subscriptions.
(16:09):
Now. Their homework wasobviously going through and
determining which ones of thesewere a priority, right? Which
ones they should keep. If theyshould keep any of them, they
knowledge that none of them werenecessities and that they could
cancel them all. They ended upcanceling a bunch of them and
changing a few others to lowertier subscriptions, right, like
less of the Premium Package, orwhatever it looked like. And all
(16:31):
in all, they ended up savingover $250 per month, right?
That's three grand a year theysaved. Now, if you haven't done
this activity, I would suggestdoing it. Now, I know there's
some apps out there. You know,people will tell me, Hey, Paul,
we think about this app. I canplug in everything, and then it
tells me if I'm wasting money onsubscriptions, and that might be
(16:52):
great or helpful, but, but Idon't like to use an app to sort
this out. I prefer to havepeople roll up their sleeves and
do the work themselves. Why?
Well, two things. It teachesdiscipline, right? It allows you
to touch things and see thingsmore, but you'll see more than
just the subscriptions. So whatdo I mean? Well, when you dump
(17:12):
all these transactions on thetable, right, all the if you're
using credit cards, credit cardtransactions, your bank
transactions, you know Venmo,Venmo Zelle, PayPal, whatever,
whatever. The all the ways youspend money. You dump one on the
table, and you rake through atleast three months of these
expenses to find yoursubscriptions. You'll find the
subscriptions, but you're alsogoing to find other expenses
(17:35):
that just jump out at you andthey'll cause you to kind of re
examine some of your spendinghabits and financial decision
making. It's a great activity.
It's so valuable. It's worthyour time because it causes you
to slow down and engages yourbrain into some good critical
thinking and decision makingpertaining to things that are
(17:58):
very relevant and very importantto you. And if you're married,
do it with your spouse, you'llquickly become much more aware
of your spending habits, morethan you ever have. And this is
the step i recommend you take.
Just set aside a few hours andwork on this. You can easily
download most spending activityinto a CSV file, right? That's
like a Excel sheet or a GoogleSheet. Right within that
(18:21):
spreadsheet, you can begin tosort and organize your expenses.
You might be very surprised withyour spending, and hopefully
you'll be excited. You'll turninto a moment of joy,
recognizing that there's someareas that I can claim back
chunks of my income, you know,and I can direct it within my
budget, towards our goals. Andif you don't have a budget, if
(18:43):
you don't have a good, effectiveprocess for managing your money,
this is a great way to identifysome reasons to start. And
here's what I recommend, do thisactivity. Once you complete this
activity, you can jump back onCatholic money talk, listen to
podcasts. Episode 73 and 74right in those episodes, it's
part one and part two. I give agreat overview and insight on
(19:06):
how to start creating afinancial plan with the mindset
of Christian stewardship. Andmaybe you don't want to listen
to two more episodes. You're notsure if you really need to do
this. Well, then stop. Go toEpisode Nine. It's my most
popular downloaded episode. It'stitled, How to live below your
means. Just listen to that. It'sit'll be a great place to start,
(19:29):
hopefully, a motivation for youto roll up your sleeves and do
some of this work. But so manypeople that I speak to and work
with, they're going through lifefeeling like they should be
doing a little betterfinancially than they are. And
when I get to talk with them andwe we touch on this topic, this
right, this, the subscriptioncreep, and I walk them through
(19:50):
it, they start to get fired up.
They want to start making somechange, because they see, they
actually see how this has been.
Healing their monthly income. SoI challenge you take a look into
this in your own situation.
You'll see what I'm talkingabout. Well, there you have it.
(20:12):
Subscription creep, the hiddenbudget killer, that's it. I hope
this has been helpful. I reallydo if it's been helpful to you,
or maybe, maybe you know afriend that you think this could
be helpful with. They're goingthrough some of this stuff, or
you think maybe they they needto do something about all the
subscriptions they have. Sharethis episode with them, but I
(20:34):
hope this has been helpful.
Thank you for joining me today.
God bless you.
Thank you for listening toCatholic money talk. I hope you
join us again next time, pleaseclick Subscribe in your podcast
app to get notified of newepisodes. God bless you and have
(20:55):
a great day. You.
Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today. Helloand welcome back to Catholic
(00:22):
money talk. Today, I want totalk about the hidden budget
killer subscription creep. Andthen, well, that was my, my poor
attempt at like, like, thathorror music kind of thing,
right? The anyway we're going totalk about subscription creep,
(00:43):
right, and why I believe that isa hidden budget killer that
happens to a lot of us. Butbefore we do that, let's say a
prayer in the name of the Fatherand of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father.
We thank you for this day. Wethank you for all the ways that
you love and bless us. Lord, weknow that you have an awesome
plan for us. Help us tosurrender our plan to your plan.
Lord, you know our needs. Youknow all the different
(01:05):
situations we find ourselves in.
Lord, just give us the strength,give us the grace. Allow us to
tap into that. Allow us to grabonto you. Lord, we know you are
close to us. We know you arebeside us. Continue to walk with
us. Lord, lead us to you. We askall this in Jesus name, amen, in
the name of the Father and ofthe Son and of the Holy Spirit,
(01:26):
Amen. So what is subscriptioncreep? Well, before we talk
about that, I just want to talkabout another topic really
quickly, and we're going tostart with lifestyle creep. This
is a common challenge, lifestylecreep. This is what happens when
our income increases and weallow our lifestyle to slowly
(01:48):
consume that increase, right?
It's when we allow expenses toslowly grow and take up more and
more and more of our income.
Right? Typically, it's ourmonthly income, and this happens
to all of us, and the sooner wecan identify it and address it,
the better off we are, and thebetter off we'll be at handling
our finances and achieving ourgoals. Lifestyle creep is what
(02:09):
happens when we don't have aplan that we're faithfully
executing and managing. And thisis so common. This is why two of
my first three podcast episodesever, right? If you look to the
beginning of my podcast, I hadintro to Catholic money talk.
The next two episodes were aboutlifestyle creep, how to identify
(02:30):
it and how to address it. It'sso important, it's it's also one
of the most downloaded topics,right? Having a few different
episodes, but those, when youadd up those, all those are like
the most popular downloadedepisodes that I have, because we
all struggle. This affects somany people, and it affects so
much because it has the abilityto quickly snowball into bigger
(02:53):
and bigger and bigger problems.
Let me give you a very quickexample. 22 years ago, when Tara
and I were first married, ourhousehold income was 45,000 a
year. That was the total betweenthe two of us. And I remember
thinking that when our householdincome would reach 100,000 a
year, we'd be loaded. We wouldhave so much extra money. Well,
10 years into our marriage, ourhousehold income, it was 100,000
(03:17):
and we felt more broke thanever. And when we began to look
into it, we found that we hadsaid yes to so many things and
not really prayerfullydiscerning anything. And the
cost that we were saying yes toslowly started to add up and add
up, and they snowballed until wehad found ourselves in just an
untenable situation, and that'swhen we realized that we had to
(03:40):
get the money stuff figured outand under control. And so this
idea of this slow creep, it canhappen to all of us, and if we
aren't mindful of it, it caneasily consume a big chunk of
our finances. Okay, so that'slifestyle creep. So what is
subscription creep, and why am Icalling it the hidden budget
(04:02):
killer? Well, let's first talkabout subscriptions. Right?
Subscriptions, you're probablyfamiliar with the term a
subscription is something wesign up for because we
experience or we anticipate thatwe'll receive some value from
it, right? Right? We we sign upto pay for the service, usually
on a recurring basis. Maybe it'smonthly. Sometimes it could be
(04:25):
annually. And some of the mostpopular subscriptions their
video, music, streamingservices, shopping, retail
services, maybe food or mealdelivery. We're surrounded by
them, right? Think Amazon Prime,Spotify, Netflix, right? I could
go on and on. Hello, fresh.
There's so many things. There'stons of them, and most of these,
(04:47):
this subscription problem, it'srelatively new, right? Let me
give you an example. Back 100years ago. No, not that far. Oh,
maybe 30 years ago. Yeah, if youwanted to watch a movie, right?
You're sitting at home, justfinished dinner. You're like,
oh, be great to watch a movietonight. We don't own any of the
movies we want, right? They'renot on our bookshelf in the VHS
(05:10):
cassette or the DVD. So you haveto get in the car and drive to
Blockbuster, right? Or HollywoodVideo, there were so many video
rental places, right? But youyou drive to Blockbuster, you
walk up and down the aisles,right, looking at all the VHS or
DVDs, right? And then you findthe one you want to pay. You
want to rent. You pay for it,you drive home, you watch it,
then you had to bring it backwithin a certain period of time,
(05:32):
or there could be late fees orother penalties. I remember when
Taryn and I, when we first gotmarried, Netflix was new, and it
had just come out with thisservice, you could sign up and
you would get a DVD in the mail,and whenever you mailed it back
in, they would send you a newDVD from the list from you would
create, like a list that youwanted to watch, and they would
(05:52):
send you the new one. And therewere different levels of service
of their membership, right? Youcould, you could have one DVD at
a time, and then you could havetwo DVDs at a time, or maybe
even up to three DVDs at a time.
There was another one red boxvideo that had popped up that
was like a vending machine, kindof standalone kiosk. You'd see
them outside grocery stores orother shopping centers, usually
(06:15):
in higher traffic areas. You'dwalk up to it, you'd literally
browse through it to see whatDVDs they had in this machine.
You'd pick one, you'd rent it,you take it home, watch it, then
you'd have to bring it back toany red box location to return
it right. Both of theseexamples, you had to physically
get there. You had to get in thecar and drive to it. And you
might only rent one or maybe twovideos a week, because it was a
(06:38):
lot of work to go out, get it,bring it back. Not super
convenient, right? So, so fastforward several years. Now we
have video streaming services.
You can pay a monthly fee andhave access to as many videos,
movies as you want, whenever youwant. You don't even have to get
up and drive there, right? Youcould. You could be laying in
(06:59):
bed. You just click, click onyour phone, and you're watching
a new movie and you want the thenext one in the episode or
series. Boom, you got it rightthere, right? And so for this
ease and convenience, you pay asubscription fee. It's usually
monthly. Maybe it has a discountif you pay for an entire year in
advance, but it's superconvenient. And you know, my
(07:20):
example, it's just for videos.
But the same is true with musicand so many other electronically
delivered things, and there'smany more, right? Amazon Prime,
it offers fast shipping, certaindeals, free digital content with
the Amazon Prime subscription,there's food subscription
services, whether it be grocerydelivery, prepared meals, you
know, meat, meat boxes, you canget clothing boxes. You get all
(07:41):
these things, these subscriptionservices where stuff just keeps
showing up at your door. Youdon't have to go anywhere, and
sometimes you can return itpretty easily if you don't want
it, right? Sometimes. But peopleare spending more and more for
these the convenience of theseservices, and there's so many
other subscriptions as well,right, new sites or other
content we're interested in, youknow, news, video games, sports,
(08:05):
Fitness, Health, some of themhave their own apps, and you
download it on your phone, andwe pay for the service. And in
the moment, we might find thatwe really feel we have a need or
a great desire to have access tothis content or service, but
maybe a couple weeks, months,days, maybe even just hours
removed. We're like, I don'tthink I really need this, but
(08:27):
there's so many othersubscription types out there.
You get the point. We findthere's a convenience or a need
for a particular service. Theysell it via subscription. We
sign up for it. So why dobusinesses offer it this way?
One, it gives them great,consistent income, right? If you
just think of you like gettingweekly or bi weekly or monthly
(08:48):
paychecks, right? Businesseslove to have recurring revenue,
right? So that's one of thereasons they do it. They're
trying to make money a monthlysubscription. It breaks down the
cost with smaller amount, makingit appear easy for us to pay for
it. And many times, you can paythrough a linked payment
service, right electronicwallet, a saved card on file, or
(09:10):
maybe through a financialservice like PayPal, they make
it super easy to pay. So we havea thought. We need it. We see
the cost. It doesn't seemsignificant. It's easy to
complete the purchase, and wenow have access to the content
or service we wanted. But nowwe've also signed up for a new
subscription.
(09:33):
Some of theyou know, one of the the
marketing that these companieswill have also be free trials,
right? However, we still need toput our financial info in so
that they can start charging usafter the free trial, if we
forget to cancel, if we decidewe don't want the service. Now,
I am not against subscriptions.
(09:53):
I just think you need to becareful to only subscribe to the
ones that you're actually goingto use, the ones that you
actually. Actually feel are apriority to you that align with
your goals and the ones you feelyou're actually receiving good
value from. And that should allbe decided within the context of
your prayerfully discernedbudget. Because here's the
(10:16):
problem, if you aren't careful,right, this this becomes that
hidden budget killer. You'llfind yourself signed up for
things that you don't really useor you don't really need. You'll
be wasting money that could havebeen spent on other things that
should have a higher priority.
That's why subscription creep isthe hidden budget killer. It
they eat up your money, takingaway from your budget. Your
(10:38):
budget is the blueprint forhitting your goals, right? This
is the steps you need to take.
This is how this month needs togo with my money for me to move
towards my goals. When thesubscription creep, when it
starts coming in, eating up ourdollars, we're not able to fund
the budget. We're not able tohit our goals, and it can be
frustrating and demoralizing. SoI'm going to give you just a
(11:02):
quick story. This is Story. Thisis just last week or two weeks
ago. Is a recent story about meusing a subscription right in
the desire for convenience andhow easy it is to sign up. So a
couple weeks ago, we're away fora week with friends in Delaware.
And the couple we were awaywith, they're big, big Yankees
baseball fans, and they'resitting there trying to figure
(11:23):
out how to watch the Yankeesgame that evening, and they
weren't able to figure out away. So I started to investigate
it. We personally the scarfones.
We have Verizon Fios, so Ilogged into my FiOS app and
attempted to view the game. Butsince we were out of our home
market, like our localgeographical area, the game was
blacked out, and we could notwatch it that way. So I thought,
(11:44):
Well, I think I've seen Yankeesgames in Amazon, like on Prime
Video. So I log in Amazon Primevideo, and I see, oh, here's the
Yankees game. And I click it andit says, in order to watch this,
you have to subscribe to the MLBTV subscription, and you get a
seven day trial for free. Andafter that, it's 2999
(12:07):
so I turned to my wife, Tara,and I said,
Look, how hard is it if we signup for this so that we can watch
a Yankees game, you know, for acouple days while we're here,
and then we cancel it. Like, howhard would that be? Because I
don't want to pay 2999 a month.
Nine a month just to havewatched, you know, two or three
Yankees games. And Taryn said,Oh, it's really easy through
(12:27):
Amazon. Just go ahead and signup and I'll cancel it today.
Like, tell me when you sign up.
Do it right now and then I'mgonna go right in and cancel the
subscription. She says,typically, they'll still give
you that seven day free trial touse it. I thought perfect. So we
signed up Taran then canceledit, and we're stable, able to
(12:48):
watch the game, right? We foundwe needed, we're able to use it,
and we canceled it before itbecame a problem. But as I just
kind of relayed that to you,it's a bit confusing and
complicated within the moment,like it was probably more brain
power than I was willing todevote to it at the time, but I
knew I had to be careful. I wastreading on thin ice, because I
didn't want to spend $30 in, youknow, that much of a second. And
(13:12):
there's been other times when Isign up and then I see the fee
come out, and I go, Oh man, Iforgot to cancel it. I go in and
cancel it. I try to get my moneyback, but it's usually gone, and
it can feel like a full timejob, or at least a part time
job, trying to keep track ofsubscriptions, canceling ones we
don't use, and we might not bethe only one accessing it. Might
(13:34):
our kids might have access tosomething, our spouse might have
access something. And so we needto have a plan to like, how do
we do this? And so having aconversation about it before we
just sign up for a subscriptionis a great kind of just check
right. A great moment to say,hey, is this something we really
want to do? But let's talk abouthow to identify the
subscriptions that we currentlyhave and then discern if we
(13:55):
should have them or not, andthen cancel the ones we don't.
Right? You might be surprisedwith what you find and tell you
a little story. A few years ago,I was working with a young
couple, and they weren't brokeor in a desperate situation.
They just felt that they weren'tsaving and investing enough
money, or they didn't think theywere saving and investing as
much money as they should bebased on how much their income
(14:17):
was. And so one of the firstthings I had them do was to go
through the last three months ofspending, right? So they looked
through their credit cardstatements. They looked through
their bank statements. Ireminded them, don't forget
about PayPal. Venmo Zelle, theylook through everything, and
they started to categorize allthese expenses to see what their
monthly average of spending was.
They found they had a lot ofsubscriptions. So I'm gonna give
(14:38):
you a quick synopsis. They hadthree different video
subscription services thataveraged a total of about $55
per month. They had $20 more permonth of music subscriptions,
then another two subscriptionsthat the wife she used for
health and fitness that totaled$60 Dollars a month. And he had
(14:59):
four different subscriptions,different sports apps that he
paid for annually. Right?
Because they started talkingabout these subscriptions, he
looked it up, and so he brokedown the monthly cost for those
four apps was a total of $33 permonth. They also had other
retail, shopping and home fooddelivery service subscriptions
(15:21):
that totaled $200 a month. Andwhen they added all of that up,
right, 55 plus 20, plus 60, plus33, plus 200 that's $368 that's
over 4400 per year, they wereshocked. They admitted that they
(15:43):
were using them all a littlehere and there, but they
couldn't believe the totaldollar amount. And then I asked
them, I love asking thisquestion, because it makes
people like if they're notfeeling great, they feel a
little bit worse. I said, Howlong do you think you've been
paying for all these and theyadmitted that it's probably been
over three years for most ofthem.
So that's over $12,000spent on these subscriptions.
(16:09):
Now. Their homework wasobviously going through and
determining which ones of thesewere a priority, right? Which
ones they should keep. If theyshould keep any of them, they
knowledge that none of them werenecessities and that they could
cancel them all. They ended upcanceling a bunch of them and
changing a few others to lowertier subscriptions, right, like
less of the Premium Package, orwhatever it looked like. And all
(16:31):
in all, they ended up savingover $250 per month, right?
That's three grand a year theysaved. Now, if you haven't done
this activity, I would suggestdoing it. Now, I know there's
some apps out there. You know,people will tell me, Hey, Paul,
we think about this app. I canplug in everything, and then it
tells me if I'm wasting money onsubscriptions, and that might be
(16:52):
great or helpful, but, but Idon't like to use an app to sort
this out. I prefer to havepeople roll up their sleeves and
do the work themselves. Why?
Well, two things. It teachesdiscipline, right? It allows you
to touch things and see thingsmore, but you'll see more than
just the subscriptions. So whatdo I mean? Well, when you dump
(17:12):
all these transactions on thetable, right, all the if you're
using credit cards, credit cardtransactions, your bank
transactions, you know Venmo,Venmo Zelle, PayPal, whatever,
whatever. The all the ways youspend money. You dump one on the
table, and you rake through atleast three months of these
expenses to find yoursubscriptions. You'll find the
subscriptions, but you're alsogoing to find other expenses
(17:35):
that just jump out at you andthey'll cause you to kind of re
examine some of your spendinghabits and financial decision
making. It's a great activity.
It's so valuable. It's worthyour time because it causes you
to slow down and engages yourbrain into some good critical
thinking and decision makingpertaining to things that are
(17:58):
very relevant and very importantto you. And if you're married,
do it with your spouse, you'llquickly become much more aware
of your spending habits, morethan you ever have. And this is
the step i recommend you take.
Just set aside a few hours andwork on this. You can easily
download most spending activityinto a CSV file, right? That's
like a Excel sheet or a GoogleSheet. Right within that
(18:21):
spreadsheet, you can begin tosort and organize your expenses.
You might be very surprised withyour spending, and hopefully
you'll be excited. You'll turninto a moment of joy,
recognizing that there's someareas that I can claim back
chunks of my income, you know,and I can direct it within my
budget, towards our goals. Andif you don't have a budget, if
(18:43):
you don't have a good, effectiveprocess for managing your money,
this is a great way to identifysome reasons to start. And
here's what I recommend, do thisactivity. Once you complete this
activity, you can jump back onCatholic money talk, listen to
podcasts. Episode 73 and 74right in those episodes, it's
part one and part two. I give agreat overview and insight on
(19:06):
how to start creating afinancial plan with the mindset
of Christian stewardship. Andmaybe you don't want to listen
to two more episodes. You're notsure if you really need to do
this. Well, then stop. Go toEpisode Nine. It's my most
popular downloaded episode. It'stitled, How to live below your
means. Just listen to that. It'sit'll be a great place to start,
(19:29):
hopefully, a motivation for youto roll up your sleeves and do
some of this work. But so manypeople that I speak to and work
with, they're going through lifefeeling like they should be
doing a little betterfinancially than they are. And
when I get to talk with them andwe we touch on this topic, this
right, this, the subscriptioncreep, and I walk them through
(19:50):
it, they start to get fired up.
They want to start making somechange, because they see, they
actually see how this has been.
Healing their monthly income. SoI challenge you take a look into
this in your own situation.
You'll see what I'm talkingabout. Well, there you have it.
(20:12):
Subscription creep, the hiddenbudget killer, that's it. I hope
this has been helpful. I reallydo if it's been helpful to you,
or maybe, maybe you know afriend that you think this could
be helpful with. They're goingthrough some of this stuff, or
you think maybe they they needto do something about all the
subscriptions they have. Sharethis episode with them, but I
(20:34):
hope this has been helpful.
Thank you for joining me today.
God bless you.
Thank you for listening toCatholic money talk. I hope you
join us again next time, pleaseclick Subscribe in your podcast
app to get notified of newepisodes. God bless you and have
(20:55):
a great day. You.
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