04 Nov 2023 | ~3 minute read

On Subscriptions

by Manu Moreale

Manu talks about some of the subscriptions he has to online services, and in particular streaming services. It's an interesting read, and I thought I'd respond.

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Manu ends his post with the following:

I'd be curious to see other people's breakdowns so if you do end up writing about your situation let me know.

Ok, Manu, you asked for it, so here's my list. I will list them by category, what the cost is, and I'll end with some spiel, where necessary, about why I have the service(s).

Let's get into it...

Streaming services

Might as well start with the main topic of Manu's post; streaming services. My wife and I cancelled our Sky subscription around 5 years ago, mainly because it was costing too much and we found we weren't watching live TV all that often.

We switched to a couple of Roku streaming "sticks" but we've since replaced the Roku with an Apple TV in the lounge. Here's the streaming services we currently have (all prices are monthly):

While expensive, this isn't as bad as it seems, as Amazon Prime includes TV, next day delivery and a bunch of other stuff. The Apple subscription is the same; we get TV, extra iCloud storage, Apple Music, and Apple Arcade.

Disney+ is mainly for the kids. My wife and I do enjoy some of the Marvel stuff on there though, so it gets a fair amount of use. Channel 4 in the UK make some great TV, this subscription removes the adverts from their streaming service.

Netflix, on the other hand, has been on the chopping block for a while. I didn't realise it was this expensive, actually. It's the most expensive TV/film only service, yet it's the one we watch the least. I don't remember the last time there was an original on Netflix that we really enjoyed - on the other services, however, there are many. I think I'll be cancelling this subscription once I'm done here.

Amazon Prime is actually very good value for money, I think.

Technology

I wasn't sure what to call this category, but here I'm talking about things like the hosting costs for this site, and remote storage costs for backups. It's the tech we use as a family.

I could go with the free plan on Buttondown, but I like being able to add custom CSS so the emails kinda match the design of the site, and (more importantly) I like to support indie developers.

Other stuff

This is the everything else section. There's lots of other subscriptions that we have every month. Things like the mortgage, various insurance policies, utilities etc. Luckily we own both the cars and all 3 motorbikes, so there's no loans to pay there.

I'm not going to go into all these details as I think it's an overshare and out of the scope of what Manu asked. There are a couple of other things though:

Final thoughts

Woah, this turned into a long one. In total I'm spending around £125 ($154) per month on utterly frivolous stuff. Which is fine, as it's mostly stuff I get enjoyment out of, or has a function. It's probably not frivolous then, I suppose. 🤷‍♂️

The cost actually isn't too bad, I was expecting it to be somewhere in the £200 ($247) region, so I can live with that. However, I'm still gonna cancel that Netflix subscription.

What do your subscriptions look like?

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