My Battle with Subscription Fatigue: Mid-Year Update

I figured I’d give an update on my ongoing battle with subscription fatigue. This is a mid-year check-in, and I might start doing these quarterly just to keep myself accountable. Over the past few months, I’ve whittled down my subscription list by several more services. Most were dropped by choice because of price or lack of use, while one disappeared on its own when my cell phone plan changed.

Gone by choice are Netflix, SiriusXM, Yahoo! Mail Plus, Mail.com, Pocket, Peacock, and Protopage. The only one I lost due to my Verizon Wireless legacy plan was Google Play Pass. Why these services? Mostly, they became too expensive or the promotional deals ended. For example, I had the Netflix/Peacock bundle through Verizon Play+. I not only let it lapse, but Verizon also shut down the entire service. It was a good idea to have everything in one place, and it could have been even better if Verizon had used their influence to get better deals from the streaming services. It would have made things more convenient for people, letting them manage everything in one place and maybe even get a discount. But it seems Verizon didn’t want to treat it as a concierge perk for loyal customers, and they were probably losing more money than it was worth, even if it worked well as a small loss leader.

My Google Play Pass was cut from my Verizon Wireless legacy plan. That plan is really only worth keeping because of all the perks and bundled services it used to include. If Verizon ever drops the Disney/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle, or if they keep raising the price until it’s no longer cheaper than paying for the services separately, I’m out of Verizon postpaid completely. The main reason I kept that plan was for those extra perks, but they’re getting harder to justify as they disappear or lose value. There are other alternatives that would be much cheaper—even if I paid full price for the Hulu/Disney+ ad-free bundle, I could add HBO Max and still come out at about the same price I’m currently paying if Verizon goes any higher.

Yahoo! Mail Plus is another example. I’m not going to pay for downgrades. They reduced the storage from 1TB on paid plans to 200GB, and the free plans are now 20GB. I never used much storage, but that was one of the main reasons I kept it. I only have one email subscription going to Yahoo! Mail Plus now. The only reason I haven’t canceled my account completely is that I still like using their front page and Yahoo Finance, and I’ve had my Yahoo account since I first got online. But when they reduced the storage, it just wasn’t worth five dollars a month to get an ad-free experience. I’ve set it up to use IMAP, so now the only ads I see are in my email, and it’s usually just a single line and not a whole page.

As for Protopage, there are a couple of reasons I’m letting it go. They have actually updated the service a bit in the last year, and honestly, the fee was reasonable, which is why I was willing to pay it to avoid ads. But I can get the same effect with a self-hosted solution, and I haven’t been able to find a privacy policy for Protopage. The lack of transparency about how they handle user data is the main reason I plan to let this subscription lapse when the current period ends.

Mail.com is similar. I was late canceling it this year, so I’ll have it for another year as well. I mainly used it as a cheap backup for years, but now the free account is perfectly adequate for my needs. Both Protopage and Mail.com are now set to cancel and won’t be renewed.

Pocket closed down, but honestly, I was planning to cancel anyway. They no longer had a good way to export or import your saved items to new services, which made it less useful. My SiriusXM promotion simply expired, and they didn’t offer me another one, so that made my decision easy.

I did reactivate one service: Paramount+. They offered a deal I couldn’t refuse, so I could catch up on the CBS series I follow. I don’t watch live TV much these days, and this gives me a way to catch up on shows I’m invested in, especially the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. If they offer me another great annual deal, I might stick with it, but if not, that’s fine too.

That’s it for my update. I need to cut back on expenses, and these are services I can trim with little consequence.

#SubscriptionFatigue #SubscriptionReview #CuttingTheCord