We had $200 a month in subscriptions we thought we'd canceled

We finally sat down and listed every subscription hitting our credit cards. The total was sobering, but the biggest hit was that we had about $200 a month in charges we thought we'd already canceled. Most were SaaS tools we'd only needed for a month or two and never got around to ending. A few we could have sworn we'd canceled, but the charge was still there.

Once we had everything in one list, we did the legwork. In a short time we'd cut our monthly subscription spend by more than half.

The unlock was visibility.

The total stays invisible until someone adds it up

We're not alone in this. Consumer subscription surveys suggest most of us think we spend around $86 a month on subscriptions, while the real number is often closer to $200 to $273. The same research finds that about 42% of people are paying for at least one subscription they've forgotten about.

Individual charges feel small: $10 here, $15 there. They live on different cards, different apps, different billing cycles. Monthly, annual, every few months. There's no single place that shows all your recurring charges next to what you actually have. So when we ask "where's the leak?" we're opening several statements, piecing it together from memory, and usually still missing something. Without one list, that question has no clear answer. We feel cash-poor and can't point to where it's going.

What we tried

Dedicated subscription apps let us list recurring charges and get reminders. Some even help with canceling. But they don't show our live balance or cash position, so "what can I cut?" still sends us to another app. And some charge a monthly fee to help us cut subscriptions. (We'll leave that there.)

Budgeting apps sometimes have a recurring view, but it's usually secondary to spending by category. The emphasis is "what did I spend?" not "what am I committed to?" Forgotten subscriptions don't always stand out.

Every workaround solves part of it. None of them answer "what am I paying for, and can I afford it?" in a single view.

What we've learned that helps

Getting it under control doesn't require a perfect system. It requires one list and a little intention.

• Get everything in one place. Name, amount, frequency, next charge date. Even a list you maintain by hand is a start. The goal is to stop reconstructing it from memory every time you wonder where the money went.

• See it next to your cash. The list only answers half the question on its own. Next to your balance, it answers "what can I cut?" and "can I afford to keep this?" in the same breath.

• Review it when you get paid. Not in a panic when something unexpected hits. Once a month, with intention. Cancel what you don't use. Pause what you're not sure about. For variable income, that review is the difference between trimming with control and reacting to the next charge.

Moxa surfaces every recurring charge in the same frame as your cash position. One list, always current, sitting alongside your current cash, and spending trends.

We still had to do the canceling. But we finally knew what we were canceling, and why.

Ready to see what's actually recurring?

If you've ever found a charge you thought you'd canceled, or felt cash-poor without knowing where it was going, join the Moxa community. We built it for exactly this: variable income, scattered subscriptions, and the relief of seeing it all in one place.

Sources

• CNET (2024), “Subscription Creep Is Real. Consumers Are Paying Over $1,000 Each Year, CNET Survey Finds” – survey of U.S. subscription spending and perception gap between reported and actual monthly spend, plus forgotten-subscription and free-trial statistics.

• Industry subscription “creep” and forgotten-subscription surveys (2024–2026), including synthesis of Just Cancel and similar data in Moxa’s Feature_Research_SubscriptionTracking_2026-03-11 – higher-end estimates of actual subscription spend and national wasted-spend figures. Representative public summary: Just Cancel, “Subscription Spending Statistics (2026): How Much Are You Really Paying?”