The short version: A subscriptions audit means listing every recurring payment leaving your account, then cancelling the ones you’ve forgotten or don’t use. Most people find somewhere between £30 and £100 a month they’re barely touching. Pull your last three bank statements, list every repeating charge, and cancel anything you couldn’t justify re-subscribing to today. It’s the fastest, least painful cut in personal finance — no willpower required.
You didn’t decide to spend £90 a month on subscriptions.
It just… happened. A free trial you forgot to cancel. A second streaming service for one show. An app you used twice. A gym you joined in January.
None of it felt like a decision. That’s exactly why it adds up.
I spent years reviewing people’s income and expenditure in financial crime and compliance roles. The forgotten recurring payment wasn’t the exception — it was the norm. Almost everyone is leaking money somewhere they’ve stopped looking.
The good news: this is the one money cut that costs you nothing you actually value. Let’s find yours.
What is a subscriptions audit?
A subscriptions audit is simply a once-over of every recurring payment you have, so you can keep what earns its place and cancel what doesn’t.
That’s it. No spreadsheet marathon, no budgeting guilt. Twenty minutes, once, and you stop the leak.
How do I find all my subscriptions?
Guessing won’t cut it — the whole problem is the ones you’ve forgotten. So go to the source.
- Pull your last three bank and card statements. Three months catches the monthly and the annual charges.
- Highlight every recurring payment — direct debits, standing orders, and card payments that repeat.
- Check the hidden hiding places: your App Store and Google Play subscriptions, and any PayPal automatic payments. These don’t always show an obvious name on your statement.
- Let an app do the heavy lifting if you’d rather. Emma flags recurring subscriptions and wasteful spending across accounts; Snoop links your accounts and points out ways to save; and Monzo and Starling both categorise spending automatically so subscriptions stand out.
One tip from experience: always check an app’s privacy and security settings before you connect it to your bank. Protect your financial data.
Which subscriptions should I actually cancel?
Not all of them — this isn’t about misery. Use one simple test for each:
“Would I re-subscribe to this today, at this price?”
If the answer’s an easy yes, keep it. If you hesitate, it’s a candidate. Look especially for:
- Duplicates — three streaming services you rotate between anyway.
- Zombie trials — free trials that quietly rolled into paid.
- “One show” subscriptions you meant to cancel after the finale.
- Annual charges you forgot were coming (these are the sneakiest).
- Doubled-up tools — two cloud storage plans, two music apps.
Keep, cut, or downgrade. Downgrading counts: a cheaper tier or an ad-supported plan can halve a cost you’d rather not lose entirely.
How much can a subscriptions audit really save?
Here’s a typical one.
Story: Monica’s 20 minutes Monica sat down with three months of statements and listed her recurring payments. She found eleven subscriptions totalling £96 a month — three streaming services she rotated between anyway, a gym she’d used twice since January, two apps left over from free trials, and a cloud storage plan she’d accidentally doubled up on. She kept the ones she genuinely valued, downgraded two, and cancelled the rest. New total: £42 a month. That’s £54 a month saved — around £648 a year — for twenty minutes and zero sacrifice she’d actually notice.
Monica didn’t budget harder or feel deprived. She just stopped paying for things she’d forgotten she had.
The M&G System: run a subscriptions audit this week
- Gather three months of bank and card statements (plus App Store, Google Play and PayPal).
- List every recurring payment in one place.
- Test each one: “Would I re-subscribe today?”
- Act — cancel, downgrade or keep. Then redirect the saving somewhere useful.
That last step matters. Money you free up doesn’t stay freed unless you send it somewhere on purpose — a savings pot, a debt, or your emergency fund. Otherwise it just leaks somewhere new.
Your next step
The cleanest way to see every leak — not just subscriptions — is to get your income and outgoings on one page. The free Income & Expenditure Tracker does the adding up for you and shows you your real monthly disposable income: moneyandgrowth101.com/tools/income-expenditure.
Want a hand making sense of what you find? A free Money Clarity Call is a relaxed 20-minute chat about your next step: book here.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I audit my subscriptions? Twice a year is plenty — try it every January and July. Put a recurring reminder in your phone so it doesn’t drift.
What’s the easiest way to spot subscriptions I’ve forgotten? Three months of statements catches most, but a tracking app like Emma or Snoop, or your Monzo/Starling categories, will surface the ones hiding under odd merchant names.
Will cancelling subscriptions hurt my credit score? No. Subscriptions aren’t credit, so cancelling them has no effect on your credit file. (Just make sure you’re not cancelling something you’re still under contract for, like some gym memberships.)
Is it worth paying for an app to cancel subscriptions? You don’t need to pay — free apps and your own statements do the job. Paid “cancel-for-you” services can help if admin is your sticking point, but weigh the fee against what you’d save.
Mustafa Alsoodany is the founder of Money & Growth 101. By day he’s worked in financial crime and compliance at banks and fintechs — JPMorgan, Monzo, Starling and Barclaycard among them — and holds the ICA Advanced Certificate in Anti-Money Laundering at Distinction. He started Money & Growth 101 to do the opposite of the day job: make money plain, jargon-free and genuinely doable for people in their 20s and 30s who were never taught it.