RetireJapan

I’ve become somewhat of a minimalist, and subscription services are an area where I’ve made some hard choices.

Some of you mind find these trivial, but the fees do add up, and I find too many subscriptions become a burden on my mind.

In the past year I’ve cancelled:

Netflix (¥12,000 a year), Apple Music (¥10,000), Headspace (¥4,800), DownDog Yoga (¥4,500), Simply Guitar (¥10,000), Duolingo (¥8,000), and Satori Reader (¥10,000).

So that’s almost ¥60,000 a year. My remaining subscriptions come to ¥8,500 a year.

Not a subscription, but I also used to drink a can of happoshu beer every night. Then one day, when I was taking out the monthly unburnable rubbish, I was shocked by the 60 empty cans my wife and I were going through. I decided then to switch to water and save some money.

My wife still drinks her daily happoshu.

I've got a few of those (also jiu-jitsu club and a bunch of fees for my granddaughter's 習い事).

At the end of the day, are they cost-effective in making you happy/improving your life?

Imo the subscription model will be one of the next debt traps that people can fall into. I keep track of all subscriptions and also try to keep it at a minimal level (but when a pregnant wife wants BBC over WOWOW, you cant do much against it )

nickr wrote: ↑Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:17 am I also used to drink a can of happoshu beer every night.

It might be useful to put a number on that habit. 2 cans at 150 yen each is 110k per year. But giving up regular drinking probably gives you a few more years to live too though, not sure if you can put a price on that

All I have is Amazon music for the Echo smart speaker. And that’s only a few hundred yen a month.

The subscriptions that I have are: Netflix (basic plan: 11,880 per year), Google Drive storage to store the photos/videos (100GB plan: 2,500 per year), and Costco for the cheap diesel and occasional shopping (4,840 per year).
Regarding the drinking, used to drink a beer everyday too, but nowadays only drink on friday and saturday. They sure taste good after a long week

In my opinion, if those subscriptions make you happy and are cost-effective, don't see the need to cancel them.

Netflix
DAZN
Amazon Prime
Amazon Music (the paid version with more songs)
just cancelled WOWOW - needed them for a sports tournament this summer.
Mrs Head has iCloud for photos as well...
(Apple TV - free for 1 year. Doesn't seem to have enough content to warrant paying when it expires.)

Probably room for reduction in there somewhere.

I’m sharing my Netflix password with two other people and we split the costs, so that really helps with the fees. The only other subscription I have is with Amazon Prime that comes with my credit card (although I am paying for it through my yearly fee). I’m really not a fan of subscriptions at all, so I avoid them as much as possible.

Got rid of the newspaper subscription 10+ years ago.Moved on from Apple TV two months ago after the free year finished.The only good program was Ted Lasso. Have Costco and Prime,and that's about it.

- Costco 4840 yen / year
- Amazon Prime 4900 yen / year
- Netflix 17880 yen / year, 1490 yen/month
- Gym 35640 yen / year, 2970 yen / month
- Spotify 11760 yen / year, 980 yen / month

Also will sign up for iCloud storage 50GB for 1560 yen / year, 130 yen / month

As long as you're happy, and making your life better like RetireJapan said, it will be money well invested in yourself.