Your free trials are costing you more than you know.
Hey Reader,
I’ve survived ice ages and mass extinctions, but auto-renew may be my downfall.
After last week’s deep dive into human innovation, I thought I’d try your favorite invention—recurring payments.
Now my inbox is full of subscription emails from Spotify, Disney+, and a yoga app with wildly unrealistic expectations for my hamstrings. (My shavasana is on point, though.)
Apparently, I have a habit of signing up for apps and forgetting they exist. Bonus points if they smell faintly of self-improvement.
So I spent the morning tracking down all those “free trials” that quietly evolved into $1000 lessons in delusion.
I can’t be the only one paying tuition.
Hoarding Is My MO
Look, I’m no stranger to collecting useless features.
Wisdom teeth show up twenty years late to a mouth so full you’ll pay $3,000 to remove them while your mom posts your nitrous-fueled meltdown on TikTok.
The appendix does nothing but occasionally try to kill you. Its only job is “medical emergency.”
And then there’s the tailbone. An artifact from the evolutionary junk drawer, like a charger for an iPod Nano you hang on to “just in case.”
Let’s make a pact to work on this together. You audit your credit card statements, I’ll reconsider male nipples.
Here’s What I Need You to Understand
Your Netflix subscription matters. Just not the way you think.
Yes, streaming burns power. Yes, data centers hum like overworked bees.
But that’s a post for another day.
Today, I want to talk about a mindset where nobody’s paying attention until everyone pays the price.
Because subscriptions aren’t the problem. They’re a symptom of the bigger disease:
Mindless consumption.
The person paying for seven streaming services they don’t watch is usually the same person who:
- Buys groceries that rot in the crisper (RIP, aspirational kale).
- Has a closet full of clothes with tags still on, and
- Scrolls Amazon at 2am buying stuff that seems essential at midnight and useless by Tuesday.
Your Netflix subscription isn’t killing the planet. But the mindset that turns every impulse into a “treat yourself” moment is.
Training Wheels for Waste
Here’s how autopilot spending works:
- Small enough not to hurt — $10/month feels like nothing until you multiply it by everything
- Auto-renewable — Silent wallet drainage, no decision required
- Invisibility — Not cluttering your space, just your bank statement
- Guilt without action — The “I should use that more” mental tax
The Insidious Pattern
In the United States, people think they spend about $80 a month on subscriptions. Try $237. I’ll wait while you pull up your last Visa bill.
You could be treating yourself to a massage every other week instead of ten “productivity” apps gathering digital dust.
You’re not wasteful on purpose. You’re just distracted. And corporations love that.
Corporate Gaslighting Doesn’t Help
Remember when Adobe sold Photoshop for $700 and it was yours forever, like buying a hammer that didn’t demand a monthly upkeep fee?
Now it’s $55 a month. Miss a payment, and they take the hammer back.
HP went full supervillain with its Instant Ink program. Stop paying the monthly fee and your printer refuses to print, even if the cartridges are still full.
And BMW tried charging $18 a month to activate heated seats already installed in your cars. They backed down under pressure, but the fact they tried says it all.
Small payments, big control. It’s genius. Evil, but genius.
But Some Subscriptions Actually Make Sense
Before you throw your hands up and go live in the woods, let’s be clear: some subscriptions align with how I operate. Circular, efficient, no waste.
- Philips Lighting-as-a-Service: They take back old bulbs and recycle the rare earth metals. Zero landfill.
- Libraries: The OG subscription. Free knowledge, shared resources, zero guilt.
- Tool Swaps: Why does every street need 20 drills? You use it twice a year, share one. Get to know your neighbors.
Do the Audit (Right Now)
Pull up your bank statements from the last three months.
Cancel three subscriptions right now. Use that money for something that actually sparks joy, or at least doesn’t require a password you’ll immediately forget.
The planet will thank you. Your bank account will thank you. And that one yoga app will finally stop sending guilt-trip emails about your ‘wellness journey.’
The Real Point
This was never about Netflix or gym memberships. It’s about attention.
The same habits that let you forget about subscriptions are the ones that fill closets, fridges, and landfills.
Companies are betting you won’t notice. Prove them wrong.
Progress, not perfection.
Mother Nature
Next Week: You’re smoking two packs a day—and you don’t even know it.
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Know someone buried under 15 bottles of mouthwash chasing a 50-cent “Subscribe & Save” discount, forward this.
Know someone who sacrificed their inbox sanity for 10% promo codes, tell them to unsubscribe from the junk and hang on to this masterpiece.
