How subscriptions designed to make your life easier are making you more stressed

Signing up for subscriptions may seem like a mature money and time-saving decision - but it turns out they can actually be a cause for stress - particularly if you don’t feel like you are getting your money’s worth or feel trapped in a contract.

Along with the necessary subscriptions - like wi-fi and electricity - a rise in subscription options means people are signing up for various subscriptions at an alarming rate.

Netflix tops the list with 128 million subscribers worldwide. The streaming service costs $10.99 per month in the US - which doesn’t seem like much - but just how many TV binges are required to get your money’s worth?

If you're someone who has a couple of favourite shows to binge and find little else of interest on there, you probably feel like the subscription is a waste of money. And yet, you keep it.

Netflix isn’t the only one.

Amazon lets you order anything you could ever need right to your door. But Prime can actually be a source of stress, especially the subscriptions within the subscription, otherwise called Subscribe & Save.

Meant to take the stress, and thought, out of having to purchase essentials like soap, mouthwash, toilet paper, or any other household products, Subscribe & Save simply charges you for the product and ships it to you on a predetermined schedule.

According to Amazon, this choice is the way to go because you can “Sit back, relax, we will take care of the rest.”

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But for some, Subscribe & Save means you can end up using products more than you need - so that you can use up your stash of soap and toothpaste before the next batch arrives.

While the logical answer - cancel the subscription - may seem obvious, it isn’t that simple.

As subscriptions are often a solution for those pressed for time, cancelling a subscription often requires more time and energy than people care to spend.

And yet this out of sight out of mind mentality can be pretty harmful to your bank account.

However, while soap is always good to have on hand, a subscription to the Kardashian app isn’t as useful.

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Ilana Kaplan, culture writer for The Independent, admitted that for her, Kim Kardashian’s app has been a source of stress since she signed up in 2015.

Although Ilana did enjoy the app for a few months, she soon realised the storage space it required meant her only choice was to delete it - but she never cancelled the subscription.

We did the math and that seemingly minimal $2.99 a month adds up, to $86 to date to be exact.

Apparently, this is a pretty common problem - but one that subscription-based businesses rely on.

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So are you subscriptions really useful? Or are they just a sneaky marketing ploy?

We asked Steve Nowottny, news and features editor at MoneySavingExpert.com and Dr Kathleen Hall, CEO of the Stress Institute, about subscription stress, and they had some interesting advice.

According to Nowottny, “If you’ll use everything you get, subscriptions can sometimes win – but in other cases, they can effectively be a marketing gimmick. The key as always is to do a hard-headed analysis of exactly what you’ll get, what you’ll use and how much it would cost to buy elsewhere.”

And it looks like subscriptions can actually be useful, as long as you use them correctly.

Steve told us: “Some subscriptions offer free trials – if so, then hopping from one free trial to the next can be an effective way to grab freebies. For example, many of the bigger online streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Now TV offer free trials, so if you try the service out one after the other, you can get months of free TV and movies.”

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But he reiterated, “Just remember to diarise to cancel before the free trial ends – the companies are banking on you not getting round to it.

“Whatever you do, don’t sign up for a subscription then forget about it. Long-forgotten payments for gyms, magazines, dating sites and more can be a costly drain on your finances.”

We’re assuming by “and more,” Nowottny is referring to the Kim Kardashian Official App.

But if you have fallen victim to this problem, don’t let the subscriptions win.

According to Nowottny, “If you suspect you might have this problem, do a full audit of your bank statements and make sure you cancel any payments which are no longer worth it.”

For Dr Hall, subscriptions have been a cause of stress in her own life - and she shared some common reasons why, as well as tips for dealing with them.

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For Hall, 2017 was a stressful year of subscriptions - in addition to a gym membership she is locked into until May 2018, she has also “been fighting with a credit card company about a subscription charge that keeps reappearing each month that I cancelled six months ago. The app subscription company asks me to log in before I can leave them an email and then the login says I don’t exist.”

This fight has left her feeling “as if I got burned and didn’t want to sign up for any more subscriptions unless I take my valuable time to weed through the fine print.”

So what does she think about subscription stress, and how we should deal with it?

According to Hall, there are five reasons subscriptions can cause stress: control, time, confusion/lack of clarity, financial stress, and frustration/anxiety.

Stress is often directly linked to the control you feel over a situation - but when you sign up for a subscription “that company is in control and you are reminded of this when they bill you each month. You can get anxious that they have the upper hand once you have signed on the dotted line.”

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In addition, she said: “Managing your subscriptions each month, verifying that the price is the same, that there is no increase or difference, and keeping track of the expiration date if you want to stop the subscription,” all take time - a factor that many people do not consider when they sign up for a subscription.

And “when you do decide to stop your subscription, this can be a nightmare that creates anxiety and anger,” according to Hall.

Although signing up for a subscription is as simple as entering your email and credit card information, cancelling a subscription often requires a lot more work.

Hall said: “Frustration or stress from trying to contact the company by exchanging emails or waiting on hold for several phone calls” are all very common occurrences for people who no longer wish to be signed up.

But since she believes “subscription service is the wave of the future, each person has to measure their own tolerance for signing on the dotted line” - whether that means paying up front each month or opting out of subscriptions altogether.

So if you feel unnecessary stress to consume media, food, soap, or any other subscription based offering at an increased rate for the sole reason of getting your money’s worth - take the time to cancel it.

While there are some instances where subscriptions are worth your money, for those that make you feel guilty, do yourself and your bank account a favour and unsubscribe - or at least try to.

Looks like you can finally cancel that gym membership without feeling guilty.