It’s Only $16.99 a Month.

The Subscription Trap Nobody Wants You to Add Up

It’s only $16.99 a month.

That’s what they tell you.

And they’re right. It IS only $16.99 a month. Until you multiply it by twelve. Then it’s $203.88 a year. And then you remember the music subscription, the streaming service, the cloud storage, the software subscription, and that other thing you signed up for six months ago because it offered a free trial.

Suddenly, you’re spending more than a thousand dollars a year on things you barely remember subscribing to.

And here’s the really clever part. Nobody ever asked you to spend a thousand dollars. They just asked you to spend $16.99. Over and over and over again.

Welcome to the wonderful world of subscriptions, where everything is affordable as long as you never add it all together.

Now, before we get too far into this, let me make something perfectly clear. I’m not against subscriptions. In fact, I use Microsoft 365 myself. I work with Microsoft products professionally, and I recognize that there are some excellent services out there that are absolutely worth paying for. Sometimes a subscription provides convenience, reliability, support, security updates, and features that would be difficult or impractical to reproduce on your own.

There are times when paying somebody else to provide a service makes perfect sense.

But here’s my question.

When did we decide that EVERYTHING needed to be a subscription?

It used to be that you bought something and owned it. You purchased software, installed it on your computer, and used it. You bought music, brought it home, and listened to it. You bought a movie, put it on the shelf, and watched it whenever you wanted. You purchased a product, and unless it broke or wore out, that was pretty much the end of the financial transaction.

Now, it seems like everybody wants a monthly payment.

Software? Subscription. Music? Subscription. Movies? Subscription. Cloud storage? Subscription. Photo editing? Subscription. Home security cameras? Subscription. Features in your automobile? In some cases, you guessed it. Subscription.

I’m beginning to wonder how long it will be before somebody offers me a monthly plan to unlock the second handle on my refrigerator.

And you know what makes all of this work?

The numbers are small enough that we don’t pay much attention to them.

Five dollars here. Ten dollars there. Sixteen ninety-nine for this. Nineteen ninety-nine for that. It’s just a few dollars, right?

Well, let’s play a little game.

Suppose you have six subscriptions. One costs $4.99 a month. Another costs $9.99. Then there’s one for $16.99, another for $19.99, one for $24.99, and finally one for $39.99.

None of those individual prices seems particularly outrageous, depending on what you’re getting.

But add them together, and you’re spending $116.94 every month.

That’s $1,403.28 a year.

Let that sink in for a minute.

ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND THREE DOLLARS AND TWENTY-EIGHT CENTS.

And if those prices never increase, which would be a rather optimistic assumption, you’re looking at $7,016.40 over five years.

Seven thousand dollars.

For six little subscriptions.

Now, imagine walking into a store and seeing a product with a price tag of $1,403.28. You’d probably stop and think about it. You might compare prices. You might ask whether you really needed it. You might even decide it wasn’t worth the money.

But divide that same amount into twelve monthly payments, spread it across six different companies, and suddenly we barely notice it.

That’s not an accident.

Monthly pricing makes a large ongoing expense feel like a small purchase. And once that payment becomes part of our routine, we tend to stop thinking about it.

The money disappears from our account, and life goes on.

Until one day we look at the bank statement and wonder where all our money went.

Here’s another thing I’ve noticed. Subscriptions have a funny way of accumulating. Nobody sits down on January 1 and says, “You know what? I think I’d like to spend another $1,500 this year on recurring payments.”

It happens gradually.

You subscribe to a music service because you want to listen to your favorite songs. Then you add a streaming service because there’s a television show you want to watch. Then another streaming service gets exclusive rights to something else. You need more cloud storage because your phone is full. You sign up for a software subscription because you need one particular feature.

And then somebody offers you a free trial.

Oh, the free trial.

That’s a beautiful little invention, isn’t it?

Try it free for seven days! No obligation! Cancel anytime!

And of course, you fully intend to cancel before the trial ends.

Absolutely.

Without question.

Then life happens. You get busy. You forget. And three months later, you’re wondering why there’s a charge on your credit card from a company you don’t even remember doing business with.

Somewhere, Steve is smiling.

Now, since I’ve mentioned Steve, let me introduce him to those of you who haven’t met him yet. Steve is our resident corporate IT enthusiast. He’s got the clipboard, the pocket protector, the company lanyard, and a necktie that he insists on wearing with a polo shirt. Steve has never encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved with an enterprise-grade cloud solution and a recurring subscription.

I can just hear him now.

“But the subscription includes continuous improvements, enhanced collaboration, premium features, and access to our growing ecosystem!”

Steve, I just wanted to edit a photograph.

“Well, the premium plan also includes AI-powered workflow optimization!”

STEVE, IT’S A PICTURE OF MY DOG.

“But think about the scalability!”

PUT THE CLIPBOARD DOWN, STEVE.

And here’s the thing. Steve isn’t entirely wrong. Sometimes those features really are useful. Sometimes having a professionally maintained service is worth every penny. Sometimes the convenience alone justifies the cost.

The problem comes when we stop asking whether we’re actually using what we’re paying for.

Let me give you a personal example.

I use Microsoft 365. Yes, the Open Source Outlaw uses Microsoft software. And no, I haven’t been asked to surrender my cowboy hat.

Why?

Because it serves a purpose for me.

I understand what it provides, I use the features I need, and I’ve made a conscious decision that the benefits justify the expense. That’s what a subscription ought to be. A choice based on value.

I don’t believe every commercial product is bad. I don’t believe every subscription is a rip-off. And I certainly don’t believe that free software is automatically better simply because it doesn’t cost anything.

Sometimes the free solution requires hours of work. Sometimes it lacks features you need. Sometimes maintaining it yourself costs more in time and frustration than paying a company to handle it.

And sometimes a commercial product is simply the best tool for the job.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

What I object to is the idea that we should automatically accept another monthly payment without considering the alternatives.

Take music, for example.

For years, we’ve been moving toward a world where music is something we access rather than something we own. We pay a monthly fee, open an app, and listen to whatever happens to be available in the service’s catalog.

And to be fair, that’s incredibly convenient. For a relatively small monthly payment, you can access an enormous collection of music. For many people, that’s an excellent value.

But here’s what bothers me.

You can pay that subscription for ten years and still not own a single song.

Ten years of a hypothetical $10.99 monthly subscription comes to $1,318.80. And if you stop paying, you generally lose access to the service’s streaming catalog.

Now, maybe that’s perfectly fine with you. Maybe the convenience and variety are worth every dollar. I’m not here to tell you otherwise.

But for me, I started asking a different question.

What if I built my own music library?

So that’s what I did.

I began collecting and organizing music that I could legally keep, storing it on my own equipment, and using an application called Navidrome to stream it wherever I wanted.

Was it easier than signing up for a streaming service?

Not initially.

Did it require some work?

Oh, you better believe it.

But now I have a music library that I control. I can organize it the way I want. I can listen without advertisements. And I don’t have to worry about a streaming service removing something from its catalog because a licensing agreement changed.

That doesn’t mean everybody should do what I did. Building a personal music library takes time, storage space, and money, especially when you’re purchasing music. It isn’t automatically cheaper than streaming.

But it gives me something I value.

Control.

And that’s really what this entire conversation is about.

I’ve done similar things with photographs, files, movies, and other digital media. I’ve explored applications like Nextcloud, Immich, Jellyfin, and other self-hosted solutions. Some of them replaced services I was paying for. Others gave me capabilities I didn’t have before.

And some of them have cost me money.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Self-hosting isn’t free.

Computers cost money. Hard drives cost money. Electricity costs money. Backups cost money. And my time certainly has value, even if I occasionally spend a Saturday afternoon chasing down a problem that turned out to be one incorrect line in a configuration file.

So I’m not going to sit here and tell you that building your own server is the secret to never spending another dollar on technology.

That’s nonsense.

But I will tell you that understanding your options can change the way you spend your money.

And you don’t have to build a server to benefit from that.

Sometimes the smartest financial decision is simply canceling something you no longer use.

Think about that for a minute.

How many subscriptions are you paying for right now?

Not how many you remember signing up for.

How many are actually being charged to your accounts?

There’s a difference.

And here’s something else worth considering. A service that was a great value two years ago may not be a great value today. Maybe the price increased. Maybe the features changed. Maybe you don’t use it as often. Maybe a better alternative has appeared.

Just because a subscription made sense when you signed up doesn’t mean it deserves a permanent place in your budget.

We ought to reevaluate these things occasionally.

And that brings me to a little exercise I’d encourage everybody to try.

Pull up your bank statements and credit card statements. Look at your recurring payments. Check the subscriptions managed through your phone, too, because some of those charges may be easy to overlook.

Write them down.

All of them.

The music services. The streaming services. The software. The cloud storage. The apps. The memberships. Anything that automatically charges you on a recurring basis.

Then take each monthly payment and multiply it by twelve. For annual subscriptions, write down the annual price.

Add everything together.

And don’t be surprised if the total is considerably higher than you expected.

Now comes the important part.

Look at that annual total and ask yourself a question.

If somebody handed me this bill for the entire year today, would I still buy it?

That’s a very different way of looking at a subscription.

It’s easy to justify $16.99 a month.

It’s a little harder to justify $203.88 a year for something you rarely use.

And it’s considerably harder to justify $1,403.28 a year when you realize how many of those services you could probably live without.

Maybe you’ll discover that every subscription is worth keeping.

Wonderful.

At least now you know.

Maybe you’ll discover that two or three services aren’t worth what you’re paying.

Cancel them.

Maybe you’ll find that an open-source application can replace something you’ve been renting for years.

Give it a try.

Or maybe you’ll decide that paying for a particular service is still the smartest choice.

That’s perfectly fine, too.

Because the goal isn’t to eliminate every subscription.

The goal is to make sure you’re the one making the decisions.

And there’s one more thing I’d like you to think about.

Every dollar you spend on something you don’t need is a dollar you can’t spend on something you do.

Maybe that’s money for a family vacation. Maybe it’s money for savings. Maybe it’s money to replace an aging computer. Maybe it’s money for a hobby, a project, or something you’ve wanted to do for years.

Or maybe it’s simply money that ought to stay in your bank account.

There’s nothing wrong with spending money on things you enjoy.

But there is something frustrating about discovering that you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on something you didn’t even realize you were still paying for.

And the subscription companies are perfectly happy to let that continue.

That’s why I believe we need to start looking at these things differently.

Don’t look at the monthly price alone.

Look at the annual cost.

Look at the five-year cost.

Look at what you’re actually getting.

And most importantly, look at whether you still need it.

Because the most expensive subscription isn’t necessarily the one with the highest monthly price.

Sometimes it’s the one you’ve been paying for years without using.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few things to check on my own bank statement.

And Steve?

Don’t even think about suggesting an application to manage my subscriptions.

“Well, there’s an excellent cloud-based platform that can consolidate all your recurring payments into one convenient dashboard!”

How much does it cost, Steve?

“Only $16.99 a month!”

STEVE!!!

Breaking the rules of Big Tech, one subscription at a time.

The Open Source Outlaw 🤠