Dear OzB
Long time since I've asked something on here; and looking to get the answers from our expert bargainers:
Right now I'm paying for:
Netflix
Google Drive 1tb
Office 365 corp license
Disney +
Youtube music family sub
LinkedIN premium
Xbox Gold Live
What subs are you keeping, and why - do you rationalise these or is subscription creep at thing? And how best to remember to save money on subscriptions
I reckon I spend about $200 a month on this crap.
yeah that was the same prob I had. was a little like what the f at the end of it.
It is lamentable that Ms Office is now subscription based.
Used to get it for $15 via HUP.
yeah i'm a little cheeky and sign up for devops subs from time to time, but the reality is that my wife is chained to her onedrive, so $14 per month for HUP and 5 users is a ok for us.
Lamentable that HUP is now more expensive than what the public can get it for (in comparison to deals posted on this website).
And how best to remember to save money on subscriptions
If you use Android, this app is great. I'm sure there's similar for iOS.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.simolation.…
I find it handy to see exactly how much all my subscriptions are costing every month so that way I can work out if they're worth me continuing or not. The app also does currency/timeframe conversion so you can analyse the data however you prefer.
awesome protip
Is there a subscription fee for it?
No.
like inception.. a subscription to manage your subscriptions..
Software as a Service as a Service
thanks for the app recommendation.
Right now I only have:
Amazon Prime $6.99
Audible $8.00 (discounted deal from "cancelling")
I get a month of Netflix about once every three or four months, and binge watch the shows I want to watch. Realised on my last stint that Netflix deleted The Joy Of Painting with Bob Ross so I am super dirty on them.
I never managed to resolve the buffering problems I had with Disney Plus after two tries. Still haven't seen The Mandalorian.
I think SBS on Demand has The Joy of Painting.
You can save $20 by getting paying yearly for Prime
Plex has a channel that streams The Joy of Painting 24/7 for free.
I reckon I spend about $200 a month on this crap.
I hope you're using loopholes where possible - Netflix from Turkey, Youtube premium from India, etc
I have:
Netflix - Under $10/month for top plan
Spotify Premium - $3/month (part of someone's family)
Youtube premium - Couple of dollars per month
Amazon Prime - $6.99/month
Ebay Plus - Under $5/month ($59/yr) (stupid yearly thing auto-renewed oops)
That's under $30/month - Meh…
Oh plus xbox gamepass ultimate, but got that for around $50/yr or something silly
no i'm not dude. i have gotten way toocomplacent and looking for tips to geolocate and save probably with a nordvpn sub. Just time vs money challenges.
Just time vs money challenges.
Just think how much money you would've saved by now if you spared under an hour or so to change them…
Oh plus xbox gamepass ultimate, but got that for around $50/yr or something silly
Correction, $3.28/month
I have:
Netflix
Amazon Prime
Kayo
Amazon Prime as a gateway for buying other things probably costs me a lot more than the subscription… "oh free shipping, why not?"
Kayo I have purely to watch the F1 (and NBA when it was on)
I don't use netflix much tbh so could probably get rid of it.
tx for sharing. I think Kayo was free with sportsbet at one point but not a sports dude too much.
Exactly like you with Kayo. Now found a way to stream F1 live in HD for free. Same 720p resolution as Kayo. Even no buffering or logging me off which I had with Kayo, they blamed on my internet (I've got Telstra 100mbps direct connection) So said goodbye to them. You're so right about Amazon, before I was just going crazy on their site but now I've calmed down and only buy stuff I need.
How are you streaming f1? Enquiring minds want to know :)
Did we ever find out?
I'm the same - for me I think these are must haves:
Currently re-evaluating these:
For me the pleasant surprise is Amazon prime - not only does it give me free delivery, but Prime video actually has some interesting stuff on there, and although I haven't used it much, Prime music and Prime Reading is an option. Very good value in my books.
Awesome response, and can follow the rationale.
I'm chained to my Google Drive since getting space bumps from all these little initiatives over time and now have close to 800Gb essential docs in the cloud
Disney plus is on the death list for me too; the value for the content isn't there and I'll ride it out until Mulan comes out.
I hate the transition from google play music to yt music, it's really annoying me at the moment.
I'm scared of the eval now of Creative cloud.
For Google Drive, would you consider switching to Onedrive, as you get at least 1TB with your Office 365 subscription? I was a dropbox user previously but switched to consolidate my online services. I also switched from Evernote to Onenote, and I'm now a slave to MS. :D
I've been hearing lots of horror stories about GPM to YTM. But from someone who's never used GPM, and only comparing it to Spotify, I think it does everything pretty well! I like the supermix and also the ability to toggle between the music video and the audio - that's just mindblowing. Just last night I spent an hour just watching all the music videos of my favourite playlist - something that would be too hard to do normally. I would probably switch if not for my family who are entrenched in Spotify. I would also have survived on the iCloud 200GB plan if not for my family :)
I was a Lightroom desktop user (no subscription), and I stupidly went and migrated everything to the cloud version. Yes, it's cool to be able to see everything on my mobile, but now I feel everything is stuck there and no easy way of getting my edits out. I mean I still have all my originals on disk but it would be a pain to replicate all my edits again with a different product. I feel like I'll be paying an exorbitant monthly fee for life whether I use it or not. If I could turn back time I would have stuck with my offline lightroom or gone a different route.
sounds excessive -I changed the mapping from my onedrive and google drive folders to replicate each other, plus there's raid on the disk too at a local level, so paying for both subs, plus like access through mobile apps to important doccos.
noted: LR - I'm not a sophisticated user but really will avoid this now, prefer the offline method to for doccos that are wip and syncing using google drive / one drive per above.
@mousie: No, that actually makes sense. I take data protection seriously as well, although I use a cloud backup service, which give me the 2nd copy. Plus I also sync to a local NAS drive. Lol.
Netflix
Disney+
I really need to look up how to get cheap Netflix from overseas, signed up to a VPN recently.
Adobe Master Collection - $24/m
Youtube Premium - $4/m
MUBI (Pre-Paid) $83/y
Patreon - $20/m
Honestly could get rid of my Patreon subs, but not too bad.
How do you get FREE YouTube Premium?
Is this even possible anymore?
Note: may not work for family plan…mine just gives the organiser is in a different country message and nothing solves it
Just buy one of those office keys of eBay or wherever you get them.
I currently only have Youtube Music for the $2.50 deal.
Otherwise I avoid the subscriptions and only use them if they're free etc. -> Not worth it otherwise.
My subs at this moment are:
Amazon Prime
Ebay Plus - only because they gave me a $50 coupon to go along with it
PSPlus - until 2024
Xbox Game Pass - until 2023
We used to have Disney+ until we realised that hardly anyone was watching anything. We had it on for 3 months, then promptly dropped that and no one has said a peep about watching something on Disney+
With regards to Office, everyone pretty much just uses the free online version or google stuff. I'm the only one that actually misses it. When I do feel the need to use actual MS Office I fire up my installed copy of Office of 2010. Everything on it still works. Although I will admit, I wouldn't mind getting a copy of 2019, hopefully under HUP.
Everyone at home uses Spotify and Youtube ALL THE TIME and not once has anyone mentioned getting a sub. If anything, the usual thought is that it'd be silly to pay for something that works just fine as it is.
And yes, I agree, software as a service really rankles me. I much prefer buying once and that's it.
I regret not getting a copy of Office 2019 under HUP. Unfortunately that ship sailed just over a year ago.
I have a Kayo subscription shared with another family member (he watches cricket over summer and I watch V8s over winter), also Amazon Prime which I subscribed to just so I could watch Good Omens, then stayed for the free shipping. Also pay Apple about $1.50pm for iCloud storage.
Can't imagine not having MS Office unfortunately as I've been using it for so long - the whole subscription bit really sucks as I used to only upgrade every four - five years. Still, OzBargain has helped me find a pretty cheap subscription in comparison to Officeworks.
I'm Netflix only, and it gives me more content than I could ever watch anyway.
My true addiction is podcasts and those are free.
$25 /month with a bit of creativity gets me:
Netflix (~&10 /month via Argentina)
Amazon prime ($5 /month - annual)
Spotify ($15 /month - duo plan)
Google one ('$0' - paid with Google survey credits)
Stan ( $0. On a family members sub)
No MS Office, but free alternatives from Google Docs/Sheets and Libre Office is more than enough for personal needs.
Id consider cancelling Netflix from time to time while binge watching something on Stan or Amazon, but have offered my parents logins and they love it… feels scabby not to pay that $10 monthly, for all the favours and gratitude I owe them throughout life.
Netflix - 10.99
Disney+ - free (leeching off a mate but would happily pay.)
…thats about it. I had WWE Network for a while but its 9.99US so about 15pm atm. I pick it up and drop it off in spurts.
Between netflix, Disney+, and ABC Kids thats pretty much the vast majority of viewing sorted.
I miss foxtel Sports/Kayo.
Dont really see the value in ebay plus/amazon prime.
Spotify is tempting.
I find it a bit strange that everybody here would have fairly big internet plans which would cost at least $60 a month, most closer to $100. But there's so many that are paying extra for these streaming sites when you can download all the same shows the moment they are released anyway. With streaming they can take off TV shows, movies, etc. whenever they want and you'll be stuck in the middle of a season wondering what's happened. Quality can be poorer with bandwidth being used on other devices and congestion. I have Amazon but mainly for shopping and music app. Even hundreds of songs are deleted every day from there. My playlist is all gaps. Kayo I can understand as sports are very hard to watch unless you pay top dollar. But TV and movies I would have thought everyone would be downloading these days instead of spending so much money on multiple services every month for no real reason. Plus your not limited to whatever Netflix, Amazon or Disney decide to show.
Streaming via a legal service is easy. Simple as that. No shady websites and virus risks, no trawling through comments to find a good quality rip, no concern about media owners going on random anti-piracy crusades.
I've virtually never had quality issues with streaming, so that's a moot point.
As a massive music fan with some pretty niche tastes, missing songs/albums does frustrate me, but with literally thousands of other songs available to me that frustration doesn't last too long.
Perhaps not for everyone, but for me the benefits outweigh the cons and the price is reasonable.
Maybe if everything you want is on Netflix…
There is a lot not on streaming services, or even streaming sites not available to us, for example HBO Max.
I agree, shady websites are not going to have a good expierience, thats why I dont' use those sites and I just automate everything which gives me a better experience then netflix does.
I got Disney+ came free with my new TV for one year. Plan to cancel it at end of one year.
I used to sign up to trial subs for Morningstar and some other investment websites.
One time I forgot which email I signed up with and it started charging me and I couldn’t unsub cos I couldn’t even log back into the account cos I forgot the email I used.
I ended up having to cancel my credit card to break the sub.
But by then it’s already Cost me $200! Big lesson.
At least it was for a subscription that actually could have recouped its own cost of it helped you to invest well.
The only "sub" I have is a VPN with PIA and that's $4.80 a month (2 year subscription for $115) it comes with 10 screen access that I have given log ins to the kids to use, otherwise everything I use is free.
Daughter gave me log in for Netflix - but she's cancelling that as of tonight with the price rise. I mentioned to her it was costing her over $190 a year to watch TV.
I have a TV that has multiple USB slots and I have a chromecast which I bought 2nd hand for $30 - best thing I've bought for watching streaming services that I stream from an old phone I was going to send to the recyclers. Mainly watch SBS on demand, ABC iview, standard YouTube and Kanopy which is free with your local library membership.
I have a 1TB use storage drive connected to my TV that I use for all the movies and TV shows that I download via TPB with my VPN except Australian content, I will always find a way to support our own to watch Australian content.
As for music, I have loaded all my music onto a SD card and that stays in my phone and now I use Audify music player (which I like better than GPM) to play it with now that GPM isn't available. I really can't live without my music. I download anything else I want from TPB - except Australian content. I always purchase that, I'm adverse to ripping off fellow Australians.
My OPPO phone actually has great built-in photo editing software so I use that if I want to edit anything.
I email myself any docs I think I might need and open with pdf if I'm out and about otherwise I don't use any cloud storage.
I use a free copy of MS office 2010 and that works absolutely fine.
I don't see the point of paying for subs to anything else if I'm paying for a VPN that gives me access to 99% of what I want to watch or listen to.
I hope this helps someone save some money :)
The only "sub" I have is a VPN with PIA and that's $4.80 a month
Sign up the next time Windscribe has their 50 or 60GB/m offer (whatever it is) to fix that.
you don't have option for 'i have no subscriptions' :P
that's a good call, sorry I should've thought about that.
Yeah I've got to agree with abc. There are ways to get nearly everything free. All it takes is a search engine and some reading. HollowWeird in particular deserve $0. Actually I take that back…. they should pay ME for risking my IQ viewing their brainwashing.
Netflix: TPB + qBittorrent
Google Drive: Only had a basic idea what this was so I looked it up. I think it might be them who recently started deleting people's files if they don't agree with the content. (So much for 'secure' and 'privacy'.) Or maybe it was MS. Either way they're both @r53hol3z.
$0.00 15GB
$1.99/m 100GB
$2.99/m 200GB
$9.99/m 2TB
$99.99/m 10TB
PER MONTH!? People actually pay this? LOL. And their other included 'discounts'…. aren't. There's sites where you can sideload apps for free. And you can get better or the same hotel prices by hunting around (or being here). e.g. What hotel is going to offer a discount in only one place.
Solution: Buy a new HDD every 1-2 years and keep two copies of important data on two different drives in two different locations. I see free software reasonably regularly to automatically back up files if someone is too lazy/busy to do it themselves. Or to do it yourself just put the OS on your main drive (e.g. an SSD). Then put all files, software settings, etc on a spinning HDD. Store stuff in one directory, divided into other directories like you would label the drawers and manila folders in a filing cabinet. Set a reminder on your phone every day/week to backup using something like TeraCopy. Install it, learn and set its options, drag and drop the same directory every day/week. Tell it to skip all duplicate files and update older with new. After it copies everything over it compares the checksums so you know you have an exact second copy without errors. (Again it has to be SET that way the first time in the options.)
Office 365 - Get an older version of Office on CD-ROM. Or use something like LibreOffice.
Disney - See point 1.
Youtube music family sub - See point Disney.
LinkedIN premium - This is an online resume service right? Become a business owner instead of a rodent in their rat race and ditch this. Or until then cancel it and only pay and upload your resume when hunting for a new job.
Xbox Gold Live - Hm… Not sure exactly but I can imagine. Online gaming while they interact with other people? It's a hard one because everyone on their deathbed expresses regret they didn't spend more time watching TV and playing video games. Tell the kids (it is for the kids right?) they can SAVE that money (another mostly-dead life skill) for something else of their choice. Like a weekend at a water park, a camping trip, stay at a beachside caravan park, etc. Buy some board games. Set up a family band. Do anything together before they're grown and gone. Or at least buy secondhand games on disc I suppose, if it's not too late, not already brainwashed by HollowWeird, Disney, and video games. ;-p
If by big boss you mean the wife, do some research online how to make it look like her idea.
Oh I thought this said December. LOL how did I get here?
I am so anti-subscriptions. The same generation that would happily spend 1/2 thier income on magazines, mobile phones and games has opened the door to every business wanting a continuous stream on money from us.
Good luck every retiring - by the time you're old you will need a continuous income just for your subscriptions.
My only optional subscriptions are $150pa mobile phone and $85pm internet. I use a lot of technology, but if it isn't free it ain't for me.
I am too, it's just I am under instruction with some of this by the big boss.
Why do you have LinkedIn premium? I used it on and off when looking for a job and found it worthless, certainly nothing close to $30pm or whatever it is.
Edit: LinkedIn is also worthless haha
a lot of my work has been contract based or project based so there's a chance I'm looking for a job in 3-6 months time.. always.
It has become a status symbol, one of which you are here simply flagging as being a participant thereof.
Why do you need so many? Do you even use them?
I severed the Foxtel cord months ago.
Your many "subscriptions" are an expression of an addiction and I would hazard a guess you feel too afraid to cancel, any, if at all.
Is your house cluttered? Are the Council requesting you clean up?
totally not, it's just a lack of TLC and I cut right back to 2 before, and it's just been a bit of a sucker bait thing. I'll give this a go for a month or two and never cleaned it up.
You guys have a lot of subscriptions!
I literally just have one, Xbox PC Game Pass.
Currently have:
Netflix
Stan
Amazon Prime
Disney+
Foxtel Now
Office 365 Subscription
Hayu
Brewfather Premium
Spotify Family
Zwift
Writing it down has told me I probably need to ditch some of these..