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sf.me > Blog > The Subscription Trap
Posted on: 16 December 2023
Reading time: 2 min Category: Software && Technology
We all have at least one subscription. They lure us with convenience and the overwhelming amount of content. We cannot imagine life without them, but in this article, I am going to show you how you can live without them.
Subscriptions are cheap on the face value. "The price of a cup of coffee per month? That sounds like a steal!" However, these are simply traps to get your money. The relative cheapness of subscriptions makes our brains take a mental shortcut to the time we bought our first subscription. This makes it trivial to keep subscribing to new services.
Humans are horrible at predicting and planning for the future. You may need a subscription now. You predict that you need it in the future. For most people, their prediction is wrong. The need for the subscription fizzles out, but the cost remains.
Our memory is on par with our planning. We forget that we have a subscription and have auto-pay enabled. Most of the time, we do not care if companies charge us for one more month because we feel like the amount is low anyways.
The prime merit of subscriptions can also be its negative. The amount of content available on video streaming subscriptions like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video causes you to spend more time scrolling than actually watching content.
Also, have you ever felt the guilt of buying a subscription, only to feel like you are not using it enough? How many hours have you wasted on random movies and shows just to make it feel like you are getting your money's worth?
If you really need a subscription this month, renew it and cancel it immediately. That way, it will stop working the next month. If you need it the next month, renew it again and so on. When doing this process, really take the time to think if you need the subscription or not. Perhaps you subscribed for a month to watch movies with your friends during your holidays, which are now over.
All in all, I don't like subscription-based products which includes SaaS as well. They are massive money and time sinks. You should try avoiding them as much as possible by assessing if you really need them or not.