Subscriptions I Cancelled At The Beginning of 2023

Home » Blog » Productivity » Subscriptions I Cancelled At The Beginning of 2023

I Saved How Much?!

Laptop, Card
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels

I’m not one for setting new years resolutions, I mean, I don’t know about you but, I tend to set them only to for them to last around 2 weeks instead of the entire year.

However, the one thing I want to do this year is lower my monthly outgoings. I want to get rid of any subscription that doesn’t add value to my life. This will in return allow me to have a budget for the things that do add value.

On a side note, the subscription services that I mention in this article aren’t necessarily bad, they just don’t provide value to me at this moment and time.

So without any further ado, here are the subscriptions I cancelled at the beginning of 2023…

1. Now TV (£9.99 per Month)

Now TV is a subscription-based TV Streaming service in the UK that allows you to watch both live and on-demand TV Shows, Movies and more. You subscribe to membership packs depending on the type of content you want to watch.

Memberships include Entertainment, Cinema, Sports and Hayu, which I believe includes US reality shows. I was mainly subscribed to the entertainment membership which cost me around £9.99 per month.

However, I found that I wasn’t really making much use of this subscription, I barely ever watched anything on it and on top of that, I’m also subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime which I use more often.

That’s why I decided to cancel it, but that’s not to say that I won’t be back if something I want to watch is made available.

2. Sophos Home Security (£49.95 per year)

Sophos Home is an excellent antivirus and security program for Windows And Mac devices. It allows you to manage multiple devices remotely using a friendly, easy-to-use interface.

I was mainly subscribed to it due to the remote feature as it meant that I could easily provide support to my family if I needed to. However, they barely ever use their laptop these days as they have moved on to tablets and smartphones.

On top of that Windows Defender which comes built-in to Windows is still a very capable antivirus solution. It’s actually been rated as a “Top Product” by AV-Test, an independent IT-Security institute. I tend to use it as my main antivirus solution with Malwarebytes being used as an on-demand scanner.

With that in mind, I still recommend Sophos Home to anybody looking for a paid internet security solution. I’m cancelling it as I don’t have a need for it personally.

3. Blinkist (£9.99 per month)

Blinkist is a book summary service that provides you with key insights from popular books in 15 minutes or less. You can either read or listen to these summaries making them ideal for a busy lifestyle.

I really like the idea of Blinkist, however, I found that I wasn’t making much use of it, especially since I mainly tend to listen to podcasts and music.

I also found that some of the book summaries are simply too summarised, missing out on some crucial detail, but I guess that’s the point.

I mainly used Blinkist as a starting point to see if I want to read the full book or not, but at that sort of price, I simply don’t find it valuable to me.

4. Audible (£7.99 per month)

Audible surely needs no introduction, but it’s an audiobook streaming service provided by Amazon that allows you to stream some of the best audiobooks. Priced at £7.99 per month, you get one credit per month which you can use for any audiobook in the entire catalogue to download and keep as well as unlimited listening to 1000s of Audible originals.

To be honest with you, I used this service a lot last year, like Blinkist, I found I wasn’t making much use of it during the last couple of months, that’s why I decided to cancel it.

As of recently, I started reading physical books again and I find the experience of sitting down and reading an actual book just so much better than listening to them or using my Amazon Kindle.

5. TickTick Premium (£2.79 per month)

After moving away from the Apple Ecosystem in early 2022, I found myself looking for a new to-do list app as Things 3 is only available on Apple devices. I tried many apps including TickTick which I ended up subscribing to.

In the end, I found that the app just didn’t work for me and I stopped using it. I moved to Any.Do and later Todoist. You can read more about my story here.

Productivity software should work for you, that’s why I tend to be picky about my ToDo list app especially if I’m to use it every day and TickTick just didn’t work for me as well as Todoist did.

I Finally Found a Multiplatform To-Do List App I Enjoy: Todoist!

6. Readwise (£7.49 per month)

Readwise is an excellent idea which allows you to save highlights from various reading platforms such as Kindle and Medium in one place. It’s great for content creators, students and anybody who wants to keep track of some of the things they read.

However, I think it’s just too expensive at £7.49 per month for the full experience!

That’s why I decided to take a different approach to saving my highlights, I now use Google Keep for highlights. Sometimes it does mean having to manually type them out, but when I’m reading a physical book or an app which doesn’t allow copying and pasting, that’s the only way.

The Verdict

Combining all of the subscriptions I mentioned above with the length I’ve had them active for, I spent £236.11 on them in 2022. That’s a saving that’s not only big enough to go into the holiday savings pot, but it’s also money that can be better spent where I actually need it.

Hopefully, in writing this article I managed to influence you to go over your subscriptions to see if they are still bringing value to you and most importantly of all I hope you’ve managed to at least save some of your hard-earned cash!

3 Subscriptions Worth Having In 2023