January 19, 1922
by Jason Cohen
from PCmag.com
With Netflix hiking its prices again, it’s a good time to get a handle on your recurring subscription services. These are the best apps to help you see exactly what you’re spending each month and how to save the most money.
Cord cutting has long been touted as the answer to costly monthly cable bills. Don’t pay for channels you never watch; just stream your favorite shows and movies online. That was the dream, but TV and cable execs have caught on.
If you want all the popular originals—The Witcher on Netflix, The Mandalorian on Disney+, Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+, Ted Lasso on Apple TV+—plus exclusive access to deep movie catalogues on HBO Max and Amazon Video, things get expensive pretty fast.
Then there’s the music you enjoy, the workouts you stream, the comics you read, and the video games you play. Every piece of content you could consume has its own subscription service that will bill you on a monthly (or yearly) basis. So this begs the question: Are you paying attention?
Mastercard now has a policy requiring merchants to get a cardholder’s approval at the end of a trial before they start billing, but you still need to do most of the work yourself. Unless you meticulously examine your statement each month, a small bump in price—or a free trial automatically converting—is easy to miss.
Read the rest on PCmag.com.