Monthly or Yearly Recurring Expenses

How many of you have small or large recurring monthly or yearly expenses that you just keep paying that really aren’t giving you the value you once thought they would?

I ask this because we just cancelled our gym membership. That is $48. a month back in our pocket. 

The reason is that we just were not using it enough. Hubby especially was not using it at all. His back was not allowing him to. I told him a couple of months ago that I was going to cancel it and he fought me about it and said he would use it. I kept track and he didn’t use it once. So I brought it up again, telling him that we might as well just take $48. each month and burn it. He finally agreed that I should cancel it. So I did that before he changed his mind. I told you how we will now get our exercise. It is pouring rain here today so I will walk 1 and 1/2 to 2 miles this morning on our treadmill instead of walking in the neighborhood.

There are so many of these kinds of recurring expenses that we have cancelled over the years. Magazines that were giving us no value due to the fact that they are 80% ads to buy things. What a waste! So I use the time waiting in doctor’s and/or dentist’s offices, and at the hair salon to read their magazines and any article that I really want to read. I no longer subscribe to magazines or purchase them at the grocery store. For full disclosure, Hubby gets one magazine subscription every month, The Family Handyman. He really enjoys it. But we don’t pay for it. My son buys it every year for him for one of his Christmas gifts. 

We no longer pay for a yearly warehouse club membership. I kept track the last couple of years that we had it and we were just not saving enough to warrant paying for the cost of the membership. We can get the same or better prices at Walmart or Amazon for the things we need. I buy meat, poultry and fish at rock bottom prices so those items were  not even saving money for us. People have said to me that they keep it to buy discounted gift cards. You have to buy a lot of gift cards to make up the membership fee. You can easily save that much money buying them through Raise or another gift card company. 

Last Black Friday, I purchased a deal for one year for Hulu. It costs me $.99 a month. I decided at that price to try it. We have enjoyed a few movies on there but not enough to warrant paying full price for it starting in November. So I have already marked my calendar to cancel it on a specific date so that I don’t pay the higher monthly fee.

We already have Amazon Prime. Between that and our Cable TV and borrowing movies from the library, we have plenty of movies to pick from. Amazon Prime is one yearly thing that we will pay for. We watch movies all of the time and Hubby uses the music. But the best savings for us is the shipping. I do a lot of shopping for clothing, gifts, specialty food for my diet, etc. on Amazon when they have the best price and it saves me time and gasoline. 

Matter of fact, as of today, I have placed 137 orders on Amazon Prime in the past year. If I divide the $119. annual fee by 137, each package cost me an average of  $ .87 per package for shipping. A lot of those packages were gifts which would have cost me a minimum of $11. to ship at UPS. These figures do not even take into account the movies and other benefits of Amazon Prime. So this is a recurring annual fee which gives us great value and is worth paying for. It won’t get cancelled anytime soon. 

We cancelled Netflix a number of years ago. No sense having Amazon Prime and Netflix. 

A family member cancelled their newspaper delivery a while ago. That person decided they were not getting the value that it cost. Instead he subscribed to the online version which he has enjoyed for a while. But he has since cancelled it and will get his local news from the TV stations. Hubby pays a fortune per year to get the daily newspaper. He enjoys reading it and doing the crossword puzzle every morning. For him, it has great value so it is worth it to us. 

I would love to cancel our Cable TV but Hubby loves it. I rarely watch anything on it. But it is valuable for Hubby so we pay for it. It may not be so valuable for you.

To me one of the worst ways to spend your money is to subscribe to those meal boxes. They come with all the instructions and ingredients to cook a meal. But you have to do the cooking! UGH! It is so much cheaper to shop for your own food or use pick up for it if you don’t like shopping. With the internet, you can find any recipe you want to make with instructions. If you have a night that you don’t want to cook, go out to eat or pick up a rotisserie chicken and a bagged salad. Just don’t do it all the time.

I just subscribed for 6 months to Ancestry.com so that I could get the records of our ancestors from other countries. It is a hobby that I have worked on for years and will be very enjoyable over the winter for me. So it is worth the price.

Once a year, check the prices for your automobile and homeowners insurance policies to see if you can get a better price from another company. We save about $400. dollars the last time we did this.

There are many more things that you could either cancel or cut back on the subscriptions that will save you money. So take the time this week to really think about whether you are getting good value from these things. If not cancel them and keep the money in your wallet.