Over the last few days I have been tracking and recording my monthly and annual payments to any and all subscriptions and household financial obligations. It has been enlightening and I recommend it to anyone who, like me, has become a little bit complacent.

When I was younger I was on top of all these kinds of things because money was tight and the family was growing. As time went by, I kept records and stayed solvent but the need to count pennies faded away.

Fast forward to today and I have been amazed at how many companies are syphoning off pieces of my bank accounts, and I am more amazed at how many of those payments are going to products I don’t use and/or don’t need and/or use rarely. As a consequence I have been able to cancel some subscriptions and to dig into the details of a few others.

Some of the highlights for me have been:

1. I have cancelled five annual subscriptions that I don’t need to keep re-subscribing to every year.
2. I identified several items that were being withdrawn from my account without a clear descriptor. Now I know what those payment are for.
3. I found that I had been paying twice for the same photo processing software via two different providers. Today I cancelled one of them, and the company, without my even asking, offered to refund 20 months of payments. Woohoo! (The cynic in me wonders if I am not the only person who was coerced into this duplicate subscription, but I’m happy to take the refund regardless.)
4. I realized I am paying far too much to a file hosting website and have yet to figure out how to save all those files somewhere else. It’s on my to-do list.
5. I created a spreadsheet so that I can keep track of monthly and annual payments, which pocket the money is taken out of, and when each subscription comes up for renewal.

As I was doing all of this and spending far too much time trying to dig out the information I needed while simultaneously relearning how to create a spreadsheet, I was also being flummoxed by emails from an American bank that told me I owed money on an account I closed two years ago.

At first, a month ago, I thought it was spam, but the emails kept coming so I tried to reach them online. It turns out that is not possible if you don’t have an account number or a social security number or a password. Eventually I was able to reach a person via their Facebook Messenger app, but she couldn’t find my account and told me it was probably spam.

Well, she was wrong. I got another email asking me for the due amount and so I tried again. Once again I was numerically challenged when trying to reach a person via the avenues identified on the website, but the Facebook Messenger link proved successful. After a lot of conversations with people who had unfamiliar accents, and who read standard-but-necessary blurb much too quickly, I was able to reach someone who closed my account for me. Again. Finally. I hope. Funnily enough, she didn’t ask me to pay the amount owing, and I didn’t mention it.

On the whole, I have come out of this ahead of the game, and have learned some valuable lessons.

1. Those apps and services that only cost a few dollars a month start to add up to big bucks over time.
2. Banks don’t provide useful identifiers for subscription payments.
3. I will forget what I have subscribed to.
4. Credit cards that I have cancelled may still be honoured by my bank.
5. The handwritten notes I have kept in a file called “Bank” have been invaluable!
6. Some companies will happily refund your money, even without you asking for it.

Over time I have moved, changed banks, added and deleted accounts, and added and deleted subscriptions, but I have always felt that I was doing well so long as I paid off my bills every month. Now, though, I realize I had been sliding into some financial commitments I didn’t need and some I hadn’t intended. Unravelling all this has not been easy, and some websites make it quite difficult. It feels good now, though, to feel as if I have the picture in focus, with or without the photography app.