Overwhelmed by the Thought of Managing Subscriptions? Tips and encouragement to help you get started.
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash
Are you curious about tracking and managing your subscriptions, but the thought of actually doing it is overwhelming to you?
Maybe your bookkeeping is behind.
Maybe you feel too busy to allocate a few hours to gathering information.
Maybe resistance showing up that is stopping you in your tracks.
If any of these things are holding you back from managing your subscriptions,
I’d love to offer some encouragement and suggestions.
Getting to know your numbers is a journey, not a destination, and the best time to get started interacting with them is now. You aren’t behind. You are exactly where you are. Your financial information is there waiting for you like a high school friend. You can pick up where you left off. You are intimately connected even if you haven’t spoken in years.
Here are some ideas to help you get started that you might play around with:
You could keep the Subscription Tracker spreadsheet open in Google Docs and add subscriptions as they come across your awareness via emails from your vendors. That won’t show you everything, but it will be an easy way to gain momentum.
You could look at last month’s bank and credit card statements and capture all your monthly subscriptions. Highlighters are helpful here. You won’t be able to see your annual renewals coming, but if you look at your statements each month, you will capture them as they happen. If you copy this year’s sheet into a new tab for next year, you will see them coming next year. Next year? It will be here before you know it.
If you work with a bookkeeper, you could ask them to fill out the tracker so you can review it. They could also update it for you monthly and send it to you as a report.
If your subscriptions are out of control and getting charged on a credit card, you could cancel this card. As you receive emails about payment failures, only update payment information for the subscriptions you want to continue with. This method saves you time figuring out the various cancellation methods for different vendors and stopping unnecessary spending within one billing cycle.
What do you think? Do any of these ideas feel doable? I’d love to hear from you and know what challenges are coming up when you think about managing subscriptions. Reply and let me know!
In love,
Carol
P.S. You can get the subscription tracker here if you haven’t grabbed it yet.