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💰 Today's Money Win
The App That's Still Charging You
30 seconds on your phone. One tap. Money back tonight.
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Put $17 a month back in your pocket — tonight.
That's what the average person wastes on subscriptions they forgot they signed up for. A CNET survey put the number at $204 a year. And most people have no idea it's happening until they check.
Right now, your phone is billing you for at least one app you haven't opened in months. In your phone settings, there's a list of every service that charges your card on autopilot. Some of them you use every day.
But the rest have been running since the day you signed up and moved on. A meditation app from January. Some cloud plan that flipped to $9.99. That streaming service you joined for one show and never opened again.
You meant to cancel. Life got busy. Now it's the end of July, and those small charges are still landing on your card like clockwork. Each one feels too small to bother with.
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$17 a month
What the average person wastes on forgotten subscriptions — CNET, 2025
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It's not a discipline problem. The subscription model was built for this exact moment — the one where you forget. Small charges that blend into a bank statement. Auto-renewals that never ask you to say yes again. Most people assume canceling is harder than it really is.
So the charges keep coming — $5 in March, $5 in April, $5 in May, June, July. Right now, 42% of people are paying for at least one subscription they forgot exists. The companies know this — they make their money the moment you stop paying attention.
But finding those charges takes about 30 seconds, and you don't need to call anyone, sit on hold, or argue with a cancellation script.
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→ The 5 PM Fix
Pick up your phone.
On iPhone: open Settings, tap your name at the top, then tap Subscriptions. Every active plan and its price shows up in one list.
On Android: open Google Play, tap your profile icon, then Payments & subscriptions, then Subscriptions.
Look for the name you don't recognize — or the one that makes you wince. Tap it, then tap Cancel. You keep access through the end of your billing cycle, so you give up nothing today. Done before your coffee gets cold.
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Most people find at least one charge they forgot was running. Some find two or three. A $6.99 fitness app from a New Year's resolution that lasted a week. That weather service you downloaded during a storm. A news trial that rolled into $12 a month.
That $9.99 app you just canceled is $120 back over the next year. Find a second one and you're past $200 — enough for a nice dinner or a full tank for a road trip. And you didn't clip a coupon, download a budget app, or change a single thing about how you live.
You just turned off a faucet that was running in a room you forgot about.
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Thirty seconds, one tap, and the leak stops tonight.
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Open your phone settings before you put it down. Find the charge you forgot about. Cancel it — takes one tap, and you keep the service through the end of your billing period. That money is yours from tonight.
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Make today a little better.
— Steph
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