You do not need Rocket Money. You do not need to link your bank to a third-party app. Thirteen months of card statements, three subscription pages, and a search of your inbox will surface every forgotten charge.
Done in seconds. No sign-up required.
Work through them in order. Most people find 2 to 4 charges they did not know they had.
Bank, credit card, debit card. Sort by merchant. Highlight any charge that repeats. Annual subs only show once a year — that is why one month is not enough.
iPhone: Settings → your name → Subscriptions. Mac: System Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. Shows every active and recently expired subscription billed through Apple.
Play Store app → profile picture → Payments and subscriptions → Subscriptions. Catches Android-billed services people often forget when they switch phones.
Account → Memberships and Subscriptions. Shows Prime Video Channels add-ons (Paramount+, AMC+, BritBox, Acorn, Showtime) that bill through Amazon and slip past inbox searches.
Search for: "renewal," "subscription," "thank you for your purchase," "your monthly charge," "auto-renewal." Cross-check against your card statement list to spot anything missing.
If you ever used PayPal for a streaming sign-up: PayPal → Settings → Payments → Manage automatic payments. Easy to overlook, often hides one or two old subscriptions.
Block 30 minutes. Open a blank note or spreadsheet. You'll list every recurring charge you find, then decide which to keep, downgrade, or cancel.
Apps like Rocket Money and Trim work by reading your transactions through Plaid. They are useful, but the trade-off is real: you grant a third-party company ongoing read access to your bank account. For a one-time audit and a recurring reminder, you do not need that level of access.
The reason subscriptions creep back is that the audit is a snapshot. Three months later you have signed up for two new trials and forgotten to cancel an old one. A renewal reminder per service turns the audit into a recurring decision instead of a one-time cleanup.
See the streaming renewal reminder pillar for setup, or learn about subscription creep to understand why this keeps happening in the first place.
Set a reminder now for the next streaming renewal you found. Repeat for each.
Done in seconds. No sign-up required.
Pull 13 months of bank and credit card statements. Read every line item. Sort by description, look for repeating charges from the same merchant. Cross-check against your Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon subscription pages. Search your inbox for "renewal," "subscription," "thank you for," and "your monthly charge." This catches both monthly and annual subs.
Annual subscriptions only show up once a year. If you pull a single month, you miss every yearly plan — Amazon Prime ($139), Spotify annual ($119), YouTube Premium yearly ($139.99), Apple One ($199.99). Thirteen months guarantees you see every billing cycle at least once.
No. Those tools work by reading your bank transactions, which means you give them access to your financial data via Plaid. The manual statement review described above takes about 30 minutes and exposes nothing. The reminder step that comes after — getting an email before each renewal — does not need bank access either.
Once every 6 months for a full audit. Plus a smaller check whenever your bank statement total feels higher than usual. The reason most people skip this is that there is no recurring trigger to make them do it — which is the same reason a reminder for the audit itself is worth setting.
Three possibilities, in order of likelihood. One: a free trial converted silently — common with streaming partners bundled into other purchases. Two: a family member or shared payment method. Three: actual unauthorized charge — rare but real. Cancel through the merchant first, then dispute with your card if the merchant will not refund.
Apple: Settings → your name → Subscriptions on iPhone, or System Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions on Mac. Google Play: Play Store → profile → Payments and subscriptions. Amazon: Account → Memberships and Subscriptions. Each one shows everything billed through that platform, including streaming partners you may have forgotten.
Free. No account. Set a renewal reminder for every service you decide to keep — get an email before the next charge so you can decide again.
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