Clark Howard: 7 Subscriptions I Canceled — and Why
Clark Howard has built a career on not wasting money, and subscriptions are one of his most consistent targets. His position isn't that all subscriptions are bad; it's that most people are paying for far more than they're actually using, and the charges keep coming whether you show up or not.
Here are the seven categories he's specifically called out, along with the reasoning behind each one.
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Streaming Services You're Not Actively Watching
Howard's test for any streaming service is straightforward. "When you see one of those monthly subscriptions, think about it: Do you watch it? Do you go there? If it's no longer of value to you, cancel that subscription," he said.
He likes to rotate instead of stacking services. That means subscribing to one service, watching what you want, then canceling and moving to the next. Paying for Netflix, Hulu, Max and Peacock simultaneously when you primarily use one of them is exactly the kind of passive spending he says people don't notice until they print out a credit card statement and go line by line.
Paid Credit Monitoring
This is the one where Howard gets emphatic. "No one should ever, ever, pay for credit monitoring," he said. "If you want credit monitoring, do it for free. There are so many places where free services are now available. The easiest of all is to just go to Credit Karma. You get credit monitoring and dynamic credit scoring for free. Credit Sesame is a great free resource as well."
Paid services from the major credit bureaus can run $25 to $30 a month. That's for something you can get at no cost elsewhere. Howard has also noted that credit monitoring is reactive by nature; it tells you after something has gone wrong. His stronger recommendation is to freeze your credit with all three bureaus, which stops the problem before it starts.
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Gym Memberships You're Not Using
Howard has flagged gym memberships repeatedly as one of the most reliable monthly money leaks, particularly because companies make cancellation so difficult. Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you. (If your hand isn't up, it's likely you arrived on this planet yesterday.)
"They make it so simple to sign up for a six-month deal at just a few dollars a month," he said. "Then, after those six months, bam! Suddenly, you're paying a huge amount of money, and you can't even figure out how to cancel the stupid thing."
His advice before signing up for any subscription is to figure out the cancellation process first. Know how to get out before you commit to getting in.
Cloud Storage You Barely Use
Howard suggests using free tiers or consolidating services rather than paying monthly for storage you rarely touch. Most people accumulate cloud storage subscriptions across multiple platforms — Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. — without ever assessing whether they actually need the paid tier on any of them. The free tiers on most services handle the needs of the average user without the monthly charge.
Duplicate Music Services
Paying for Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music simultaneously is a version of the streaming stacking problem applied to audio. Again, Howard says you need to pick one, use it and cancel the others. If you're not using a music subscription at all, that's an even easier cut.
Shopping Memberships You've Outgrown
Prime, Walmart+ and similar memberships can be worth their annual cost when you're using the perks consistently. Howard's point is that many people have more than one and aren't getting real value from any of them beyond the habit of having it. If you're not actively using free shipping, exclusive deals or other benefits regularly enough to offset the membership fee, it's overhead rather than value.
Forgotten App and Free Trial Subscriptions
Howard's four-step process for tracking these down is simple: Get a paper copy of your credit card bill or print it out, go through it line by line, identify your subscriptions and their costs and cancel the ones you no longer use or feel are not worth the money.
Free trials that auto-renew into paid subscriptions are specifically designed to be forgotten. Howard recommends setting a calendar reminder the moment you start any trial so the decision to keep or cancel is intentional rather than passive.
If you think the subscription might be hard to cancel, Howard suggests putting it on a prepaid card with a low balance. When the renewal hits and the card declines, the subscription stops without the hassle of navigating a deliberately confusing cancellation process.
Howard also stresses disabling auto-renewal whenever possible. "Once you've signed up for it, they're all designed to auto-renew," he said. That default setting is how companies count on inertia to keep your money coming in long after you've stopped caring about the service.
This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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