One night we were hanging out and he mentioned it again, so I asked if we could actually look at his transactions. He shrugged and said sure, because he genuinely didn’t think we’d find anything.
We scrolled for a bit and almost immediately saw a streaming service he hadn’t opened in months. Then a music app he said he “basically stopped using.” Then a random productivity app he downloaded during a short phase where he thought he’d suddenly become very organized. Each one was around $8–$15 a month, nothing huge on its own.
When I added them up, it came out to just under $100 a month. And that was only what we noticed right away. He stared at the screen for a second and then said, completely serious, “Wait… they still charge you even if you don’t use it?”
I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. I asked him what he thought would happen. He said, “I figured if you stop opening the app, they eventually stop charging you. Why wouldn’t they?”
That’s when I realized this wasn’t forgetfulness. He genuinely believed subscriptions worked on some kind of honor system.
What made it worse was that he didn’t mentally count any of this as spending. In his mind, money only counted when he actively chose to buy something. Anything automatic felt invisible to him, even though it was quietly happening every month.
After going back and forth about this for a while, I told him he should probably use something that keeps an eye on this stuff so he doesn’t have to rely on memory or assumptions. I recommended him a tool that tracks subscriptions and recurring charges and makes it obvious what’s still active.
A few days later he messaged me saying it was both helpful and uncomfortable. He’d found two more subscriptions he didn’t recognize at all and one annual renewal that was coming up soon that he definitely would’ve missed. He canceled most of it and said it felt like he’d just gotten a small raise.
Now he randomly brings this story up like it’s a lesson he learned the hard way. He still insists he’s “pretty careful with money,” but at least now he checks what’s actually going out instead of assuming unused apps magically take care of themselves. Some realizations come later than you expect.
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