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Friday Fun: What Services/Subscriptions can't you live without?

Jimmy Seddon

Happy Friday Everyone!

I’m usually running around behind the scenes and it has been quite some time since I have had the pleasure to welcome you all to the start of the weekend!

You may or may not have heard that recently, Netflix has rolled out some account changes in Canada. This has been met with a lot of backlash and negative opinions and feelings towards Netflix with many evaluating if they are really getting the value for the price they currently pay (including my wife and I).

This got me thinking, is every service/subscription I have a “luxury“ item that I could live without, or are there some that would make life very difficult. Given that my wife and I both work from home an internet service has become as important as any other utility (Heat, Power, Water). But, everything else is a “nice to have“.

With two young children, having Disney+ has been extremely beneficial to be able to introduce them to some of our favorite movies from when we were growing up. The fact that Disney also owns the rights to Star Wars and Marvel means my son and I get to “nerd out“ regularly.

I also enjoy our Amazon Prime subscription. Yes it’s nice to be able to get faster delivery times, but Prime Gaming also provides me with one free Twitch subscription every month which allows me to support the channel of my favorite charity: ExtraLife4Kids!

Extra life.png

My question to you all this week - Are there and services/subscriptions that you pay for which you simply couldn’t live without? Maybe it’s that gym membership or a weekly/monthly food subscription. I’d love to hear from all of you in the comments below!

I hope you all have an amazing weekend!

Comments

Amanda Barber

We've been having the same conversation about some of our video subscriptions. We were sharing some of the subscriptions, so at some point I think we'll need to re-evaluate what we have! Netflix is one that I'm not eager to let go of since it really has the most variety and biggest bang for our buck across our family (ages 8-40 in this household.) I think I'd also have a hard time letting go of our Costco membership - although, while I kid myself into thinking I save money by shopping there, I'd probably save a lot of money by avoiding shopping there since I always get sucked into things I don't need!

Top 20 Costco GIFs | Find the best GIF on Gfycat

Saralie S.

@Jimmy Seddon Ahh I love this prompt!! For me, it's sadly UberEats! I never know what I want to eat for dinner, so I love hunting for new spots! I've discovered my fave restaurants (I do sometimes go in person lol) on UberEats.

giphy

Andy Gladstone

Getting a headstart on the weekend here (it's still Thursday for me).

Great prompt (as always) @Jimmy Seddon. I took a quick inventory a little while back of the number of monthly and annual subscription services my wife and I maintain and cut back on $134/month by cancelling some of the lesser used/lesser value ones. Here are three that I could not live without:

1. Reader's Digest

I don't know how many years we have been subscribers, probably 23 since that is how long we have been married. We both love reading it every month. It has the perfect blend of stories, games and vignettes that peak our interests. It's a permanent fixture in the bathroom (TMI?).

2. Strava

The only social media platform I am on. OK, LinkedIn is now also social media, but I will save that for another rant. It is the perfect blend of my love of data and cycling. I can geek out all over a weekend group ride, provide kudos to motivate friends and enjoy seeing where my connections are cycling, running, kayaking, etc. Even though there is a subscription increase starting next month, it is still worth it for tracking my progress and maintaining my connections with those the help inspire me to push a bit harder on the bike.

3. Zwift

The fixture of my indoor pain cave. A place to be anti-social and social at the same time. Riding indoors alone in my basement during the colder months or on rainy days, I love Zwift. Technically I could suspend my subscription in the 'off-season', but I keep the monthly payments going because I believe in the platform and their mission and mission statement. For the same reason I continue to pay for Trello even though I could get it free. I love hopping on my bike and being transported to distant lands to cycle through. It's fitness and entertainment bundled in one.

Monique vdB

Yes, great topic Jimmy!

Screen Shot 2023-02-16 at 2.55.52 PM.png

Much like the Gladstones and Reader's Digest, my spouse and I have a loyalty to the New York Times Sunday crossword. He subscribes to the physical paper and so we do it on paper together every Sunday; this also means I get to do Wordle and the Spelling Bee every day online. I love them!

One of my 2022 resolutions was to improve my Dutch, so I spent last year subscribed to Duolingo. They changed the format a bit and I find it less addictive these days, but I'll keep subscribing to it through the summer, when I plan to spend 6 weeks working out of our Amsterdam office and hopefully practicing my Dutch for real.

For streaming services, we tend to rotate through a few - Apple TV when Severance and Ted Lasso are on, HBO Max for Our Flag Means Death and White Lotus, and whatever Hacks is on. Bring back cable bundles because it's exhausting 😂

Amanda Barber

What an amazing opportunity for immersion into the language!

Viktoriya Borisova

Spotify - I have it on allllll day. I once hit 103k+ in listening minutes for the year.

I can deal with ads for shows & movies, but never for music 😅

P.S. This is a great question Jimmy!

John Funk

I don't know that there are any that I couldn't do with out as there's actually very few that I have. I have several that are Free - does that count? haha

Maybe Sam's Club of Costco in the states because those save me money. But now that I am in Dubai, I'll probably end up with some here. :-)

Craig Nodwell_7eve9b

Ohhh mannnnn this is a hard one. I mean I have a crap load of these and they all have different content that both me and the wife are hooked on. Music service indeed that's isn't going anywhere. Disney+ it's not just for Snow White any more...
Do I have to @Jimmy Seddon LOL

Robert Wen_Cprime_

How do I not sound like a broken record (kids, ask your parents what that means!)?

1. Netflix

2. Disney+

3. Paramount+ (don't bother me now, I'm watching Picard!)

Dave Mathijs

Basic Human Needs.png

Apart from that:

Google One (cloud storage for files & pictures/memories)
YouTube (couldn't do without it, I need my daily dose)
Spotify (music was my first love ... and it will be my last)

Mikael Sandberg

Great topic @Jimmy Seddon!

Yes, I do have too many subscriptions, and should probably do an inventory and think about if we really need some of them or not. But I can already hear my two daughters protesting if we do. But I did get rid of the Roblox subscriptions without any objections, so who knows.

There are a couple that we would not be able to live without, Costco being one of them. Another one would be ESPN Plus, since that is the only way I can follow Hurricanes on their way to Stanley Cup (wishful thinking and fingers crossed)!

cut

Brant Schroeder

@Mikael Sandberg I will echo ESPN+ If I do watch TV, I watch sports.

Dave LIAO

@Jimmy Seddon - hehehe, does my Jira Cloud subscription count?

Dave LIAO

YouTube Premium or whatever it's called is pretty cool! I love being able to save videos for flights. Plus you can get a family plan for others!

Dave LIAO

Oh man, #17! Haven't seen that name since my childhood!

Darryl Lee

HA! Indeed, I wouldn't be able to be a community leader without my free (sometimes on trial for me to try the cool new paid features) Atlassian Cloud accounts.

Dave LIAO

Right? I appreciate being able to test paid features on our Community Sandbox too...

Darryl Lee

Great topic, @Jimmy Seddon! Here's a pic of my current subs followed an overly long explanation (as I do):

So, Spotify because as horribly tiny as their payments to artists are, I still feel like I'm hopefully paying them something or giving them useful stats they can track? Listening to music on YouTube like all the kids do is a lousy experience, but I also hate ads, and YouTube Premium (formerly Red) unlocks ad-free bliss.

When I see YouTube ads on somebody else's computer/TV (or as my wife learned, when showing a video to kids using a teacher's laptop), we're always jarred and offended. How do people live like this? (Yes, the Brave browser can block them on computers. I have that too. But it doesn't work on all the Roku devices I now have since working for them.)

The fact that the whole family uses Spotify and YouTube Premium takes a bit of the sting out of the monthly cost.

My wife can't live without Netflix now that they've gotten so aggressive in their buying of Korean dramas.

@Monique vdB - we also subscribe to the New York Times home delivery (Sunday only), and this includes NYT games which I had previously been paying for separately! I love doing the crossword and occasionally can get a streak going, if I don't forget. And I too prefer doing it on paper, but that doesn't record my stats. Also, WordleBot to analyze my Wordle strategy.

Speaking of papers... sometimes I feel like we're single-handedly keeping our local paper in business, but we also subscribe to the paper edition of the San Jose Mercury News. It's kind of a shadow of its former self, but it's what we've got.

OH, and this reminds me that just yesterday, I finally decided to get rid of Xfinity. [Although their cancel form says that somebody will be calling me in two business days to "make sure" I really want to cancel. Oy, "customer retention". It's ok. I'm a Jira Admin. I'm good at saying "No." (h/t @Rachel Wright. But also, after reading this article about cancelling Xfinity, I might just say we're moving. Ugh.]

Anyways, cancelling Xfinity means I'm finally taking the plunge and cutting the cord! My brother was an early adopter on this front. (He upgrades his TV every few years. We have his old huge 55" Vizio HDTV and he just gifted his "old" ginormous 60" LG 4K TV to my parents). He is a big sports fan and TV watcher so I trust him when he says YouTube TV with their unlimited DVR is the way to go. (If you need a $15/mo discount for the first 3 months I think I should have a referral code in maybe 4 days after my "free trial" is over. Or maybe I have to wait until after my 3-mo promo offer is over. Who knows. It's a brave new world!) (Also, their user interface is kind of crappy. Hum.)

Let's see...oh oh, and as @Dave Mathijs correctly points out with his diagram, NONE OF THIS would be possible without solid Wifi or really Internet (gig Ethernet FTW). I switched off of Xfinity Internet at the beginning of the pandemic, because it was just not able to keep up with 4 people having to do Zoom sessions at the same time. I was only able to do this because AT&T finally ran fiber to our neighborhood (after promising for years). But since I hate AT&T, I pay for service through Sonic which was my original DSL (remember that!?) provider when we first moved into this house almost 23 years ago.

Sonic is a great "local" ISP that has solid technical and customer support, so it was so good to get back to them, even if I'm still having to run on top of AT&T's equipment. (To be fair, the AT&T tech who installed the fiber was top notch.)

While I'm not sad to be finally leaving Xfinity behind, I am a little sad that I won't be using our TiVos anymore. To be fair they're are super-old (Premiere XLs that I've had to replace the hard drives in at least once each), but god I remember when we had our first TiVo and what a game-changer it was...

Anyways, whew, that's a lot. I should add some pictures so this isn't so text-heavy. OMG, is it Saturday already?

Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_

Oh wow - this post is full of interesting services 👀
For me, it's Crunchyroll, gym + swimming pool, and a weekly doggy food delivery (this makes me more responsible dog mum 😂)

Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_

haha, this is a good one!! You passed the test 💥

Dave LIAO

Crunchyroll! I haven't been on that site in forever - I logged in maybe a month ago to try watching the last season of Attack on Titan, but it's really hard to watch that anime and try to do something else 🤣

Former user

I found that I can live without TV/movie streaming services, I can tolerate ads on YouTube, but I can't live without some sort of music streaming service. I don't mind too much which one but I'm not going to get through a desk job without a soundtrack!

When my mate's shared subscription to YouTube Premium (with YouTube Music included) expired, it took me less than a week to start my own subscription for music streaming.

Elizabeth Jones_v3gwqb

Apple TV

Carlotta Kuhn

I agree with a lot of the comments here. I can't live without Spotify and don't want ads between my songs. Another great one I use is Youtube TV because it offers many different things - shows, sports, etc. As a cat owner, I also have a food subscription so I don't have to worry about them going hungry 😄

Steffen Burzlaff (K15t)

I +1 YouTube Premium.
I'm so much on YouTube watching videos that it's worth the money. Also I don't have Spotify since with YouTube Premium, YouTube Music is already included and I can't see a difference between the platforms, except that YouTube Music provides lyrics and music videos as well :-)

Rachel Wright

I got rid of my TV/DVR/cable subscription when I started my RV trip in 2015. I don't miss it at all! I get my news and entertainment from the common (free) online video streaming services.

Each time I stay in a hotel, I flip through TV channels just to see if I'm missing anything.

Confirmed: There are 1,000,000 channels but still nothing good to watch!

Great thread as usual @Jimmy Seddon! Thanks for keeping everyone engaged.

Amanda Barber

I'm staying at a hotel now (and stuck for an extra night due to weather delays) and we are SO tired of scrolling the endless channels with nothing to watch. It doesn't help that the wifi is terrible and we're trying to satisfy ages 8-40. Thankfully we just stumbled on some Marvel movie marathon so we'll be set for the night.

Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire

Wow, @Jimmy Seddon that's a cool discussion I apparently missed!
All the super handy services mentioned here 🙌

I'll add my top 3:

1. Youtube Premium 🎥 (Since non-skippable ads were allowed)

2. Apple Music 🎧 (looks like everyone is a Spotify fan here 😉)

3. Audible 📚📚📚 (I physically can't read as many books as I wish)

Ah, and Google One to store all thingies & photos, but that doesn't really count 😊

Esther Strom

I got rid of my cable TV subscription a few years ago, and the only thing I really missed was Jeopardy, so I just started spending $60+ per month for YouTube Premium just so I can have network TV and a cloud DVR for 30 minutes of TV a day. Still cheaper than cable by far, although I should probably look at my various streaming subscriptions.

Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_

Ha! So true, especially when watching original with subtitles ... I wish I could understand Japanese

Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_

Yes Audible! That's a good one I have too

Kristin Lyons

Definitely Spotify. I couldn't stand not being able to listen to whatever I want without ads!

Nichols Wood

I'm also addicted to the internet as I am a digital marketer and running an online business balloons delivery and can't live without that. If I skip this then there are higher chances that my business will be in loss that's why I don't take any risk of being outside all day.

Dave LIAO

@Nichols Wood - are there any services or subscriptions that are totally intertwined with your life that you couldn't live without?

Curious if you're rocking a Trello Premium subscription, or maybe paying for Spotify! 🙌

Alex Koxaras -Relational-

Nice topic @Jimmy Seddon !

Although I have just a few subscriprtion services like Netfilx and Disney+, the one that I'm addicted is youtube. WIth or without ads, there are tons of useful videos there, from music, tutorials, funny stuff, documentaries and movies.

Summer Hogan_q8imea

Great topic @Jimmy Seddon and this one has a lot of replies! You got people thinking on this one. For me, it is all the TV and Music subscriptions I have such as:

Netflix
Disney +
Apple TV
Prime TV

And let's not forget the music ones too:

Spotify
Amazon Music

Oh and let's not forget Amazon Prime subscription, Sam's Club, and the many news subscriptions I pay for!

It's a subscription type world out there! Content is no longer free! I'm just handing out money all over the place!

LoRi_pbdhu4

A bit late, but tomorrow is Friday again! I keep a long list of my subscriptions and most are the same as everyone like: Spotify, Disney+, The New York Times, Netflix and Peacock! But outside of entertainment streamers, i also subscribe to the fat $$ ADOBE CC design bundle

Adobe_Creative_Cloud_rainbow_icon.svg.png

And a VPN across all my devices called Disconnect which i find very useful to block tracking sites and try to keep my privacy somewhat still private.

Disconnect.me_logo.svg.png

And i just cancelled one of my favorite subscriptions (sadface) because I just got too many supplies and wasn't using them as much as when i signed up, Art Snacks. But still highly recommend!

Nichols Wood

I am paying for Spotify, I love music when I am working. As I said I have a balloon delivery business so always I turn on the birthday party music and get new ideas. 🤩

Darryl Lee

@Nichols Wood Balloon Delivery? I'd love to hear how you use Atlassian products in your business!

Andy Gladstone

Who doesn't love a summary post? YouTube Premium just outpaced Spotify.

Peter Van de Voorde

Veel succes met je Nederlands en geniet van de 6 weken in Amsterdam
En kom gerust eens naar België ook

Peter Van de Voorde

For me it's just my internet connection, although I do love my Netflix and Disney+ subscriptions but I can do without them if needed. I don't think I could live without an internet connection anymore.

Darryl Lee

Due to some intense windstorms on Tuesday, many of us in the SF Bay Area were without power for at least 24 hours, and some friends STILL do not have power coming up on 48 hours, and for some of them the estimate from our utility provider PG&E (yes, the one you may have heard about) is that their service may not be restored until Friday or Saturday!

SO yeah. #1 Service I can't live without: Electricity.

I'm very grateful that back in 2021 my wife convinced me to invest in Tesla solar panels and a PowerWall (battery), as it covered us for almost all of the 26-hour outage we went through. And impressively, our Internet also stayed up, as I guess AT&T's fiber goes back to the CO with a generator (and somehow doesn't need repeaters? Or maybe we just got lucky with repeaters unaffected by the outage.) (Friends who are on Xfinity cable Internet still do not have it, despite also having Tesla solar+PowerWalls. My understanding is that Xfinity relies pretty heavily on UPSes to power their infra, so those are eventually going to run out.)

One regret was that we didn't think earlier to check in with our neighbors. Yesterday morning (Weds) our neighbor across the street rang our doorbell asking if she could charge her phone. I had some full powerbanks to lend her. Then I texted our older next-door neighbor to see if they needed anything charged. He brought over his powerbank, but it was actually still nearly full. He's well-prepared.

Chris K_4mhp8d

What a cool discussion for the weekend! As I am scrolling through this thread, I already saw some apps, which I'll definitely check out Goodbye emergency fund 💸💸💸

Here are my favorite apps, I couldn't live without:

Spotify: I need my daily dose of epic and classic music for deep work! And also some Slim Shady for the 20-minute ride home 🤙🏻
Audible: Podcasts and audiobooks, my most recent is the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse from Charlie Mackesy, which I can highly recommend. It lasts only about one hour, but it has deep messages and Charlies voice is so calming and heartwarming. There is also a film of the story (on apple +), which just won an Oscar as best animated short-film - well deserved in my opinion! 🏆
Komoot: I love hiking and mountainbiking and komoot is the perfect app for planning tours and interact with like-minded people. The premium content of komoot includes detailed hiking and biking maps, which gets bigger and bigger through the activities of the community. 2 years ago, I used the app in malta, and I was really surprised that even the smallest trails were in the app. We ended on a really rough climbing over a huge sand dune, but we made it to the beach, so it was worth the effort 🌟

Greetings from Germany

Chris

Paul Wiggers

There are two subscriptions that are never doubted:

Apple Music. Even with the recent price increase, I get a ton of value out of it. If I have to purchase every single album I add to my library, I would have to pay a lot more
MyFitnessPal. Tracking what I eat helps me understand food better and shows me how it impacts me in both mood and weight.

Other subscriptions that have made the recent culling

Disney+
Amazon Prime
NFL GamePass (EU based so no NFL+ branding)
Medium
Netflix

I would love to have a newspaper subscription but analog ones are quite expensive. Reading online newspapers just isn't for me.

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