Forgive me Bogle, for I have sinned.

Last month, I committed one of the seven deadly sins of personal finance: auto-renewing a little-used subscription without a thought or consideration as to whether I still use that service. The subscription? Bluehost, also known has this here website’s web hosting service.

What does this mean? Effectively, we just signed a three-year contract to keep this site up and running, sporadic posting schedule be damned. When a fairly hefty $360 renewal hit my bank account (I have no idea if that’s a good deal or not, by the way), it reminded me that I’d gone dark since the Super Bowl. Although football is (mostly) gone until fall, personal finance knows no offseason, and now is as good a time as any to emerge from the self-imposed shadows.

The sin of auto-renewing subscriptions

This silly little blog renewal of mine is not necessarily a mistake. Chances are, I would have renewed my hosting service anyway. I’m confident enough that I can extract the value of the renewal price back, thanks to my friends at MEGA TECH companies providing me peanuts via Amazon Affiliates and Google Adsense. And dammit, sometimes you just wanna blog. The mistake of it all is in the lack of intentionality that went into the auto-renewal.

Subscription services are sort of the reverse of automated investing. Automating your investments is an excellent way to contribute to your retirement without having to think about it. That’s the beauty of it. On the flip side, automating your subscriptions is a great way to end up paying for a lot of frivolous subscription services. Sometimes, it pays to pay attention.

Take time to tally your subscription costs

As I learned when I dumped traditional cable a few years ago, the streaming world can get quite pricey in its own right. Between a cable alternative like YouTube TV, a handful of “essential” services like Netflix and Hulu, maybe throw in an Apple TV or HBO Whatever or Disney Plus–but definitely not Peacock–and it doesn’t take much to surpass that Comcast bill of old.

Then of course there’s your Amazon Prime for your shopping, Kindle for your reading, Spotify for your music listening, Dumb Game on your iPhone for mindless playing, and maybe even a web host for occasional blogging. As you see, these things can add up quickly.

When was the last time you tallied up all of your subscriptions?

An Impersonal Update

So what’s going on here at Impersonal Finances? Surely I must be up to something big, considering I can’t even keep track of hundreds of dollars worth of auto-subs. Alas, nothing doing but the slow and steady march toward the goal of financial freedom. To that end, there will be a more concerted effort to use this $120/year online canvas to better paint a picture of said goals, and maybe even have some fun along the way. Please consider renewing your subscription to these infrequent musings going forward, for the low, low cost of a few minutes of your time.

But for the love of God, cancel Peacock.