Save $50.99 This Year With the Juice Cleanse of Personal Finance

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Wash out the stains blemishing your bank account. Find out how much you can save by removing subscriptions from your budget. [[{“value”:”

“Detox your finances” feels like a fru-fru way of telling you to stop spending so much. Though the famous (or infamous?) juice cleanse trend has nothing to do with purging your checking account of impurities, there’s a working equivalent. I’ve done it. It works.

You can wipe your wallet clean of leeches by performing a subscription cleanse — canceling your subscriptions in a way. Doing so is saving me at least $104.99 per month this year (a conservative estimate — more below).

You can achieve this by following well-known psychological tendencies, ones published in NYT-bestselling books like Atomic Habits by author James Clear. The following is your step-by-step guide to budgeting without feeling like you’re budgeting — chances are good you’ll save at least $50 this year.

How to unsubscribe so it isn’t scary

I give myself permission to resubscribe. No commitment. No promise to swear off Netflix, DoorDash, and Uber One forevermore. This takes the fear out of unsubscribing.

The other day, my housemate showed me her budget. When I suggested she give subscription cleansing a try, she balked. “That seems scary,” she said, wide-eyed. I didn’t push. She’s right. I get sweaty hands when I cancel subscriptions I love. Especially the expensive ones (gulp).

That’s why you take the commitment portion out of it. You quiet that shrieking part of you, the part that’s convinced something bad will happen when your service ends. Not sure how much money you’re losing to subscriptions? Discover how budgeting apps make it easy to track spend and check out our list of recommended budgeting apps to get started today.

But if there’s no commitment, why bother doing it? Atomic Habits has the answer.

The psychology behind why it saves you money

It’s easier to let a subscription quietly fade away than it is to consciously delete it from your life forever. It’s Darwinism at work — survival of the most useful and entertaining.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says, “the people with the best self-control are typically those who need to use it the least…self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long one.” In other words, self-control is overrated. It’s tough to commit.

Take the self-control out of canceling subscriptions by giving yourself permission to renew. Out of the 13 subscriptions I canceled, I resubscribed to five. And I still save $104.99 per month!

It works because you never think about the subscriptions you don’t use. The subscriptions you care least about disappear without you realizing. And the temptation to resubscribe is tempered by a new obstacle: clicking “subscribe.” Do you really want to spend that kind of money?

Meanwhile, it becomes clear which subscriptions are important to you — because you end up resubscribing to them. Clarity! Don’t you want to know what really matters?

How can you save by deleting subscriptions?

You save the monthly sticker cost and the cost of buying products through the platform. I save $104.99 per month in subscriptions I would have renewed, plus a flat $50.99 in delayed renewals (the math: I’m assuming I’ve delayed renewals for an average of one month per subscription).

Since canceling my DoorDash DashPass subscription, I’ve gone from spending $500 to $0 per month on meal delivery. Canceling the subscriptions that give you discounts can have the added benefit of reducing your spend on the platforms. (Looking at you next, Amazon.)

You might be surprised by how many subscriptions you have. I was. I spent $50 per month on writing software, at least $30 on streaming services, and almost $50 on delivery. Keeping my subscriptions reasonable is on track to save me $314.97 from now through the end of 2024.

How to do the juice cleanse of personal finance

The actual subscription cleanse takes 10 minutes:

Write down all your subscriptions. If you’re like me, this may take a couple minutes.Navigate to your streaming or delivery websites.Click “unsubscribe.” This may require you to push through a small flood of marketing pitches designed to get you to stick around. Stay strong!

Say you cleanse your subscriptions, brush out the lingering cobwebs, and discover you’ve freed up $100 to spend on other things. Why not put that money to work? Learn how high-yield savings accounts can earn you rates 10 times better than what your current bank offers.

I audit my subscriptions once every month or two. It keeps me from sticking to plans I rarely — if ever — use. Consider it to cut down on monthly expenses. Even if you resubscribe to every single service, you could save $50.99 this year by delaying renewals. Not a bad deal.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Discover Financial Services is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Cole Tretheway has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Netflix, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Discover Financial Services. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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