I recently saw an ad for an app that will find all my subscriptions and identify those that I am paying for but no longer use. Brilliant! Someone really understands me.

Although I tried to download the app, it doesn’t seem to work for me. I don’t know if the problem is my geographic location, my banks, or my mid-Atlantic accent. Whatever it was, I couldn’t take advantage of this great financial step forward.

Undaunted, I thought, “Well, I can do that myself!” And so, over the next few days I started tracking all the monthly and annual payments I was making to all sorts of companies from various accounts. There were far more subscriptions than I anticipated. When you start to realize that you have been subscribing to websites you haven’t visited in a year or more, then it becomes embarrassing.

“No worries,” I thought. “This is a problem that requires a spreadsheet!,” and so I resurrected an app that I hadn’t used since before Covid and started to list items as they showed up on my budgeting app. From there I went to my chequing account, which led me to my Apple account, and my Adobe account, and, and, and. This thing exploded.

I was, eventually, able to print out my spreadsheet which gave me a place on which to write notes as I explored all sorts of anomalies. I had duplicate bills for Internet, missing bills for newspapers and streaming apps, two different bills for a photo processing app, and some mystery bills from Amazon.

The spreadsheet did not only give me a gasp-inducing total monthly bill, it also shed light on some things I thought I could fix fairly easily. Of course, none of these companies makes it easy to find out what you are paying for and why you might be paying twice for the same thing, but I persevered.

I found that one of my Internet bills is for the Internet and the other is for Internet Security. One of my Amazon Channels is for BBC and the other is for PBS, but they don’t specify that on my bank statement. I’m trying to figure out why BritBox is offering me a better deal if I sign with them directly than if I go through Amazon, but that may not be worth the hassle to resolve.

I’m still figuring out the two Lightroom bills, but I have an appointment to talk with a human about that tomorrow. Also, I had inadvertently listed Apple iTunes and Apple One as two separate charges, but it is actually only one debit with a name change.

I’m still tracking my subscriptions to newspapers, but I am happy to have cancelled one and confirmed that I am getting the free version of two others. One UK paper seems to only work on Greenwich Mean Time, so I will be getting back to them in the middle of the night.

My Spotify membership is on a family plan, so I will quietly let it pass that I no longer live in the same house as my eldest child.

As I work my way through this list of subscriptions, it occurred to me that if I were to kick the bucket tonight, one of my children would have to figure out all the accounts I regularly make payments to and then persuade all those companies that I have joined the heavenly choir. It might take them months to figure all this out, but I will be singing my encouragement from afar.

Also, when I go to the notary next week to update my will, I’m going to take my list of subscriptions. They don’t usually ask for this, but perhaps they should. Collectively, these bills are not a major financial issue, but individually they can be really time-consuming.