• psycotica0@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Cancel subscription, the headline:

    Millenials are killing subscription-based businesses!

    😛

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      $250/year starting investing in 2020 into the regular S&P 500 would be worth $3,703 today. So maybe as much as a month and a half of rent depending on where you live. However the point being is, if the subscription is unused, you’re not getting any value for it. A free month (or more) of rent is something you’ll actually use.

      • kalkulat@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        would be worth $3,703 today. Or perhaps $250 tomaro when the AI bubble pops. An investment in the market is obviously worth more to those high-living traders, of course (and those fee-loving brokers), so they concur.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago
              • A common insurance co-pay to see a Primary Care Physician (regular family doctor) is $40. That could mean going to the doctor or not for some folks.

              • $20 would pay for five different 30 day prescriptions of common generic prescription drugs.

              • $25 ($5 short) would buy more than a month’s worth of insulin.

              • $20 will by 35lbs or rice. That’s well over 2 weeks worth of meals (at 2000 calories a day).

              • $20 will pay for one month of mobile phone service with unlimited talk and text along with 4GB of data (as well as hotspot functionality)

              • $20 would pay for 100 full charges on a very large ebike battery. Thats enough to go 7500 miles of range on average.

            • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
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              2 days ago

              While I agree $20 doesn’t go far, a $20 bill at least makes sure I have enough to give my kid if he says he needs a couple bucks.

              • Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Which as always is a fair answer. I do get feelings of joy remembering asking my parents for something and them actually saying yes for like a book/video game/flash drive. Hell, I remember being excited exactly that way getting an 8gb flash drive so I could finally burn dvd’s to something other than physical DVD’s.

                Hope your kid gets that too!

                • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
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                  6 hours ago

                  To be fair my kid is a man now, he still lives at home but that is mainly because he doesn’t have a need to move out and he can save up while he lives at home (he works in his chosen field but prices are crazy). He definitely got almost anything he wanted but he always asked for stuff within reason and against all odds we’ve had a particularly lucky run at things over the past decade or so.

  • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    Working as inteded. The whole move to subscriptions is because people tend to forget about them. They stop using a service but don’t cancel it.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      Which is why I’m careful. That is why I always reject the “no payments or interest for 6 months” offers stores sometimes have - I “know” they won’t remind me to pay it off in 6 months and then I’m paying more.

  • LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    How does this happen though? I don’t even pay a single subscription, I can’t imagine just signing up for loads and just throwing my money away.

    • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
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      17 hours ago

      Free trials are explicitly designed to be just long enough that the average user forgets they’ve signed up for it and it can auto charge after the trial ends. There’s a ridiculous amount of dark pattern psychology research on this exact topic, paid for by companies like Amazon and Netflix.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      17 hours ago

      Signing up once and forgetting to cancel. Check your bank statements, folks.

  • melfie@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    If it’s a subscription that should really be a one-time purchase, best to look for alternatives. Especially with software subscriptions, there’s often an option that is completely free that does the job well enough, if not better.

  • 404found@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Easy to do considering subscriptions are out of control. The US is getting to a point where people will have to start paying a subscription to breathe air. The good news is there will probably be 3 different tiers of air subscription.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Me: These subscription costs are really getting crazy. We should cancel any that we don’t use regularly and just resubscribe when we have something specific that we want to watch.

    My partner every couple of weeks ever since: I would still cancel [service that you use at least once a week but I rarely do].

    Me: And I would cancel [service that you use once every few months but I never do].

    And here we are, with subscriptions for most services.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Just wait until you see how much they waste on unused life insurance!

      I know you’re joking, but lots of people buy really bad life insurance products (whole life, universal variable policies) that are a horrible waste of money in 99.9% of people’s situations.

      A large-ish term life insurance is fine if you have a family that needs to replace your income if you die early. Other than that, you only need enough money to get your remains put in the ground without burdening your family. Estimate $10k or so for full funeral and burial plot if that is your desire. If you just want cremation and spreading of ashes is much cheaper. If you’ve got the cash for that, you don’t even need a small term policy for that.

  • Zarobi@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    My ex had three separate Amazon prime subscriptions going at once for three separate accounts and only used one of them. It was a lot of money wasted for no reason. I’m convinced most people never actually look at their bank account. Once a month I go through the expenses and make sure they all add up, it’s really not hard to do and catches weird stuff like this

  • iceberg314@slrpnk.net
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    2 days ago

    Once a year, I make a spreadsheet of my transactions and sort them by name to review subscriptions.

    But honestly, just scrolling through your transactions once a week it easy to catch and cancel stuff you don’t use very often

  • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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    3 days ago

    That’s $20 a month. Not really a huge amount. Compare that with how much is spent on gas that could be saved with an EV, it’s a drop in the bucket

    • Chozo@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, I was gonna say, that’s like a single Netflix subscription for the year these days. That’s not a lot at all.

        • GalacticRobot@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Are ‘normal’ people paying for that? I can see coders and those who’s companies are paying for it, but I can’t imagine a lot of individuals are. I use my own LLM at home, and while not as ‘amazing’ as Claude, it get’s 90% of the tinkering I want to do done pretty easily.

          • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
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            2 hours ago

            Some software engineers are indeed buying the max 20x subscription (temporary) to get the most out of fable. But fable 5 is after today no longer within the subscription. So no, most people most likely will stop their subscription after this month.

            But often the 100 dollar per month is sufficient already. For some developers also cheaper Pro subscription as well. And recently gpt 5.6 has been released which is almost as good as Fable 5. Yet at the fraction of the costs, and they also keep providing access to gpt 5.6 sol. While Fable like I said is no longer available.

            To answer your question. No ‘normal’ people should never buy these kind of subscriptions. I don’t see any benefit. Maybe if you are into science or engineering… Or some small other niches.