How to calculate what your subscriptions cost over time

By the end of this post you can put a single yearly number on your subscriptions. You can also stretch it a few years ahead, and see what a price change does to it. You need a list, a calculator and your statements.

It's trickier than it looks. Charges arrive on different cycles. A $3 weekly add-on and a $99 yearly renewal don't add up until they're on the same scale. And a yearly charge appears on one statement out of twelve, so it can drop off the list.

The figures below are made up. They're there to show the math, so swap in your own.

1. List what you pay and how often

Start with the recurring charges on your bank and card statements. For each one, write down three things: the name, the amount on the statement, and how often it bills.

Use the amount that actually hits the statement. A family tier or a plan with tax added costs more than the advertised starting price, and the statement number is the one you pay.

Six months of statements show the weekly, monthly and quarterly charges. Yearly ones need twelve months, or a search of your email for "renewal" or "receipt". How to find hidden subscriptions walks through the full search, including the merchant names that are hard to recognize.

Say your list looks like this:

• Streaming service: $15.99 a month
• Gym membership: $50 a month
• Cloud storage: $2.99 a month
• Software, billed yearly: $99 a year
• Newsletter, billed quarterly: $15 a quarter
• Meal-plan add-on: $3 a week

2. Put every charge on a yearly scale

Each billing cycle has its own multiplier to get to a year:

Run the example list through it:

• Streaming: $15.99 × 12 = $191.88
• Gym: $50 × 12 = $600
• Cloud storage: $2.99 × 12 = $35.88
• Software: $99
• Newsletter: $15 × 4 = $60
• Meal plan: $3 × 52 = $156

Add them up and the yearly total is $1,142.76.

To see a charge as a monthly amount instead, divide its yearly cost by 12. The software comes to $8.25 a month, and the meal plan comes to $13. The whole list comes to about $95.23 a month.

3. Project it a few years ahead

Multiply the yearly total by the number of years you want to see. Over three years, the example list comes to $1,142.76 × 3 = $3,428.28.

That assumes no price changes. Prices can rise, so it helps to try one. Pick a change you think is plausible and label it as your assumption. Say the streaming service goes from $15.99 to $17.99 a month after the first year. That's $2 × 12 = $24 more in each of years two and three. The three-year total becomes $3,428.28 + $48 = $3,476.28.

To check whether a price has moved already, line up the same charge across a few statements. Signs you're paying for subscriptions you don't use covers what a price jump can tell you.

4. Compare monthly and yearly plans

Some services offer the same plan monthly or yearly. To compare them, find the month where the monthly plan passes the yearly price.

Say a service costs $12.99 a month or $99 a year. Divide the yearly price by the monthly one: $99 ÷ $12.99 is about 7.6. Seven monthly payments come to $90.93, under $99. Eight come to $103.92, over it. So the yearly plan comes out ahead if you keep the service eight months or longer.

The yearly plan is a bigger charge up front, and the money is paid for the full year at once. Whether you get any of it back after cancelling depends on the service's terms.

5. Check the renewal date before you decide

Now sort the list from most expensive to least, so you can see what each one adds to the total. Then go through it one charge at a time: keep it, cancel it, or come back to it later.

For a yearly charge, the renewal date matters. Cancelling two weeks before a $99 renewal can keep that $99 off next year's statement. Cancelling the week after it renews stops the following year's charge. Whether any of this year's charge comes back depends on the service. Cancelling is done with the service itself, through its app, its site or its support line.

Write down each renewal date you find, and set a reminder a couple of weeks ahead of it. Then put a date on your calendar for the next review, a few months out. Nice work: you now have a number, a projection and a plan for the next look.

Where Unspending Spree fits

The math above works with a calculator and your statements. Unspending Spree scans your transactions for recurring charges on weekly, monthly and quarterly cycles, and surfaces the ones you may have lost track of. Annual ones you can add yourself. Once subscriptions are found, it tracks them over time. You see each subscription's price history and spot increases. The Unspending Spree is the guided challenge where you review subscriptions one by one: keep, cancel, or defer.