Money Donuts® Donut Hole 3: The Subscription Service Showdown

Steve:
Needs versus wants.

Cooper:
Needs versus wants.

James:
If I'm really looking at it through that frame, then I guess I don't need any subscription services and I can spend all my time making paper airplanes and reading books.

Steve:
Are you a big paper airplane maker?

James:
We're not doing tangents. We're doing a donut hole.

Steve:
Sorry.

Steve:
Hey, welcome to another Donut Hole with Royal Credit Union's, Money Podcast Donut, no Money Pod, Money Donut Podcasters. That's what we're calling us.

Cooper:
No, we should be the Sprinkles.

Steve:
Oh yes. Doo-wop, doo-wop.

Cooper:
We're the Sprinkles.

Steve:
We're a doo-wop group called, The Sprinkles.

James:
Whatever we're doing, we're here with the new Donut Hole.

Steve:
As you can tell, James is not in for The Sprinkles doo-wop group. So we're just discussing about subscription services, music subscription services, delivery subscription services, television subscription services, and Cooper kind of ran into something during the pandemic that maybe you also have run into.

Cooper:
Yeah, I signed up for a music streaming service that I did not need because it was a dollar for three months. And now, multiple months later I have forgotten to cancel it. So for the last two months, I've actually paid for that subscription and I'm not even using it, which I think is a common thing for some people.

James:
And did you have that with another streaming service that offered something similar? Was it more than one streaming service that kind of did the same thing even?

Cooper:
Kind of.

Steve:
So when you originally signed up for the new music streaming service, was there something that you were missing from the other subscription service that you're, "Oh I just...", or was it like, "Hey this is free for three months, let's just give it a shot."

Cooper:
If we're going to be honest, I don't know why I did it because I had it before and I didn't like it. And it was really just that three months for a dollar or three months free or whatever it was that I was, "I have a dollar, why not?" I'm a terrible example.

Steve:
But that ended up costing you money in the long run, so.

Cooper:
Yeah, now I'm $30 into the subscription and I need to cancel it today. That's on my to-do list. Well, I pay for my TV streaming service simply to watch the same show over and over and over again. So if that's worth it to you. I literally pay for Netflix to watch Gilmore Girls over and over and over again.

Steve:
Oh, Rory.

James:
Okay. I was trying to troubleshoot that in my head. Like what would be the best way to get around that, right? Purchase the set on Apple...

Steve:
Everybody's so lazy right now. I could own Gilmore Girls on DVD, which I do. And I'm still going to just watch it on Netflix or watch it on a streaming service because I don't want to get out the DVDs and try to find the episode that I... What disc is it on? I just want to find the episode, Luke comes back and marries Lorelai.

Cooper:
Oh, you're going to make me cry. I mean, honestly though, who has a DVD player?

James:
Yeah, I was going to say I had the same experience in my household this week. My wife got a DVD from the library and she wanted to watch it, but we don't have a DVD player. So she has to get the DVD drive, it's a USB power DVD drive, she has to hook that up to our computer because our laptop doesn't have a DVD slot anymore, right? And then she just watch it on that. But if she wants to watch it on her phone, maybe she wants to whatever, she can't do it.

Steve:
I do think it's funny that she checks out a DVD without any plan of how she was going to watch it but...

James:
She told me she placed it on hold, like during the first weeks of the pandemic and it finally came in. So I mean, the good news is it's free, it's from the library, it doesn't cost you anything, good way to save money. But the bad news is, it's a little more hassle to actually watch it.

Cooper:
I agree with that actually, use the library, because they have Kindle books, audio books, you can stream media stuff. It's a little extra work, but so worth it because it's free.

Steve:
You know, that kind of circles back of seeing what types of resources that you have and doing an audit of all of that stuff is that, maybe you don't need seven different streaming services.

Cooper:
So I think many of us have bought a lot of subscriptions during the pandemic, and even probably before that. Take a look at your account statement, wherever you get that and see what you're actually paying for out there. I forget about subscriptions, like my music streaming service that I signed up for, for a dollar and now have paid $30 for, so cancel those and save yourself some money because they add up.

James:
But I just switched to subscriptions. If you cut the cable or [inaudible 00:05:20] satellite because of those subscriptions, I think the takeaway is just be careful that your subscriptions don't add up to the same as your cable bill used to be.

Cooper:
Only pay for what you need.

James:
That's all we have for this time. We have some things to think about on our end. Catch us next time at Money Donuts from Royal Credit Union.

Steve:
And make sure you subscribe to this podcast.