How to find every subscription you pay for

Subscriptions are designed to be forgotten. The amounts are small, they renew on their own, and prices tend to rise quietly. Most people who sit down to count theirs find at least one they'd stopped thinking about. Here's how to find all of them, with or without an app.

Step 1: gather a few months of statements

Pull your last three months of bank and card statements. Three months is enough to spot anything monthly or weekly. Yearly renewals hide better: look back over the last twelve months for one-off charges from services you recognize.

Step 2: look for what repeats

A subscription leaves a pattern: the same amount, from the same merchant, on roughly the same day each week, month or year. Watch for umbrella names too. App store charges such as APPLE.COM/BILL or GOOGLE can bundle several subscriptions under one label, and payment services can hide the real merchant.

Step 3: add up the monthly and the yearly cost

List each subscription with its monthly price, then multiply by twelve. The yearly number changes how they feel. Three modest services, say $15.49, $11.99 and $2.99, come to $30.47 a month, or $365.64 a year.

Step 4: decide what stays

For each one, ask: did I use this last month, and would I sign up again today at this price? Cancel the ones that fail both. Cancel in the right place: subscriptions bought inside an app are managed in your Google Play or App Store subscription settings, not by deleting the app.

Step 5: keep watching

• Price rises. Compare each charge with what you paid last time.
• Charges after cancelling. Check the next statement after you cancel. Mistakes happen.
• Free trials. Note the date a trial converts to paid, and decide before then.
• Renewals. A reminder a few days before a yearly renewal is the difference between cancelling in time and paying for another year.

How Drachma does it for you

Doing all this by hand works, but it's exactly the kind of chore that's easy to skip. Drachma does it on your phone, without a bank connection:

• Found automatically. Drachma spots charges that repeat across your history and every new statement you import, and knows services like Netflix, Spotify, Apple and Google by name.
• Price rises, flagged. When a subscription starts costing more, you see it.
• Asks, doesn't guess. If a statement can't tell a renewal from a one-off purchase, Drachma asks you once.
• "I cancelled this." Mark a subscription cancelled, and Drachma tells you if it ever charges you again.
• Renewal reminders with Drachma Plus: a heads-up 1, 2, 3 or 7 days before something renews, and your subscriptions ranked by what they cost in a year.

Free tracks three subscriptions, with price-rise flags and the "charged again" alert. Plus tracks all of them.

Let Drachma find them for you

Import a statement and Drachma spots your subscriptions on your phone, with no bank login. Free tracks 3; Plus tracks all of them.