What the heck am I subscribed to now?
A new year is a time for reflection, anticipation, and starting a brand new financial spreadsheet. I’ve got a fresh and relatively rudimentary worksheet going in Numbers. It may not have all the bells and whistles that some financial documents might have, but it gets the job done.
What it does have is a list of all my monthly and annual subscriptions. Recently, I took a look at them to see what I’m paying for, and also what I can stand to stop paying for. Writing all this down can be helpful when it comes to making those decisions, so I’m going to hop on the bandwagon and use Maique’s recent post about the same topic as inspiration.
Categories of need:
- Essential: it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
- Nice to have: the world won’t end if I get rid of it, but I’d miss it a whole lot.
- Needs to go: working on the courage I need to get it out of my life.
Subscriptions I’m keeping
- Apple One: I use just about everything in this bundle and it’s shared with my family. It’s probably the most important item here. Essential. $29.95 a month.
- Backblaze: If you’re not backing up often and automatically, you’re using a computer wrong. Essential. $70 a year.
- Carrot Weather: I could probably use Apple’s free weather app, but this one can be customized to my exact desires and it’s a lot of fun. Nice to have. $14.99 a year.
- Castro: I listen to podcasts probably more than anything else. I love them and I love how Castro works. Essential. $8.99 a year.
- Drafts: I don’t know that I would call Drafts itself essential, but I think an extensible text editor is. I’m growing to love this, but I’ve always got my eye out for other options. Essential-ish. $19.99 a year.
- Fantastical: There’s a free Apple alternative, but I’ve never enjoyed using it. The natural language support alone makes Fantastical a necessity. Essential. $39.99 a year.
- HBO Max: It’s just entertainment, but I think that’s an important thing to have, especially when we’re all stuck indoors. It’s still too expensive. Nice to have. $14.99 a month.
- Hover: Domain hosting and email for Dandy Cat. The email bit could go. Essential. $50.17 a year.
- Hulu: Same as HBO Max. There’s so much on here that I enjoy. Nice to have. $12.99 a month.
- Letterboxd: Letterboxd was the best thing I discovered last year. I don’t have too much interest in the social side of the service, but I love everything else about it so much that I became a patron. Nice to have. $49 a year.
- Micro.blog: This is where Dandy Cat lives. It’s where I’ve met some lovely people. It’s cared for by people who truly care. I love it. Essential. $5 a month.
- 1Password: I wish I could start using Apple’s improved password manager, but my wife also depends on this. Still, a password manager is a must for any computer user. Essential. $59 a year.
- Parcel: I don’t have to have a package tracker, but when I order things online it’s nice to know where my stuff is in the world. Nice to have. $2.99 a year.
- Patreon - Do By Friday: This show has always brought me joy. Good enough to support, but could go away. Nice to have. $5 a month.
- Relay FM - four supported shows: Like the Do By Friday membership, the shows on Relay FM make me happy. I want them to continue existing. Nice to have. $20 a month (four shows for $5 apiece).
- Sleep Cycle: I’ve started using my Apple Watch for sleep tracking, so this one is sure to go soon. Somehow I was grandfathered into only paying two bucks a year for their premium service, so that price is hard to give up. Needs to go. $1.99 a year.
- Widgetsmith: Totally inessential, but it makes my phone look nice, so I like it. If needed, this can easily go away. Nice to have. $1.99 a month.
Amount spent on monthly subscriptions: $89.92.
Amount spent on annual subscriptions: $337.10.
Annual total for all subscriptions: $1,416.14.
Subscriptions I’m letting lapse
- Google One: This was being used only as a backup solution, but there are other ways to do this that don’t involve Google. Was $19.99 a year.
- Mindnode: This is a stellar app, but I don’t use mind maps nearly enough to make this worth the expense. Was $19.99 a year.
- Paste: After finding Pastebot, this one became superfluous. Was $9.99 a year.
- Ulysses: I love Ulysses, but my needs for a text editor started to outpace what it was providing this year. I also wasn’t too pleased with some of their recent design decisions and slow feature updates. Was $29.99 a year.
Luke M. Perez great list. I have backblaze on my January to-do. I clone my drive one per month and have a dedicated external for TimeMachine. But that doesn’t inspire confidence since occasionally my laptop and drives are all in the same location. No bueno.
Sean Anderson @maique Writing all of those items made me feel like I’ve dug myself into a bit of a hole and then lost the ladder to get back out!
Sean Anderson @lukemperez I’ve got a Time Machine SSD hooked up continuously, too. I think you and I had the same feeling: there really must be an off-site backup. Not having one feels like a disaster just waiting to happen. For what it’s worth, I love Backblaze and can’t imagine feeling otherwise. It’s nice to have that sense of security, even if I neve rhave to use it. 🤞
Luke M. Perez indeed, yes! I’ve dragging my feet, but I like that back blaze will copy attached drives. So my Time Machine and the clone of my wife’s hard drive get an extra backup as well.
Funny story. I once asked a girl I was dating about her backups. She demurred. I said, what you do if your machine crashed, was stolen, or was destroyed in an accident. She looked at me for only a moment until she realized what I was asking. “I would drop out of law school. No, first I would cry and drink a bottle pf wine. Then, in the morning, I would visit the dean of students and drop out.”
We both married different people, but she still backs up.
Sean Anderson @lukemperez Another backup success story! I appreciate how you got the point of backing up across with this person. And it sounds like it stuck! Perhaps many people don’t ever consider those emergency situations until they become a terrible reality.
Seems like Backblaze should cover everyone at your home. Happy backing up!