Friday Fun: What Services/Subscriptions can't you live without?
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!
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!
29 comments
@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.
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.
Yes, great topic Jimmy!
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 😂
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!
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)
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)!
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?
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! 
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
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.
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!
Who doesn't love a summary post? YouTube Premium just outpaced Spotify.
