Subscription Madness

It’s amazing the number of companies that want to provide services for a monthly fee. My father complains about this at times, and I used to brush it off. But increasingly, I too find myself a bit put off by this. Of course, I am partly to blame for subscribing to so many of them. My current subscriptions can be broken down into two categories:

Monthly

• ($05) Backblaze
• ($05) Evernote
• ($08) Hulu Plus
• ($04) iCloud Storage – 200GB
• ($10) Rdio
• ($10) Squarespace

Annually

• ($25) iTunes Match
• ($15) Domain registration
• ($20) Email

Monthly Subscriptions

Backblaze

Backblaze is offsite backups, and offsite backups are important.

Evernote

Evernote has been increasingly irritating, but it had been the best way to keep a variety of information. With iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, though, Apple Notes is good enough to dump Evernote.

Hulu Plus

Another family member pays for Netflix; I pay for Hulu. Together, a good mix of entertainment to choose from. The ads are mildly annoying (duh). I’m currently watching Seinfeld from the beginning, which should take me a while. And according to BBC America:

Subscribers to Hulu Plus have access to by far the largest library of Doctor Who episodes.

iCloud Storage

Staying, because I use iCloud to backup my devices, and iCloud Photo Library.

Rdio

When I’m in the car, this app is invariably running. The price is not bad for its large catalog and offline abilities. Plus, I can stream over cellular without using my data allotment (thanks, T-Mobile)! The apps are the downside; they look very nice, but behave unreliably.

Squarespace

This site runs on Squarespace. I love the ease of use and good looks. I enjoy having my own website. But I don’t use it as frequently as I feel I should. I would save about $24 by switching to an annual subscription. This is still up in the air.

Annual Subscriptions

iTunes Match

At only $25/year, this service makes music not purchased on iTunes available on any device, and if the song matches with a song in the iTunes catalog, provides the 256kbps version. Unsubscribing may prove inconvenient, even after downloading all songs to my computer.

Domain registration

$15 per year to maintain the scojjac.com domain is a small price. But it currently only proves useful in conjunction with Squarespace and/or paid email.

Email

This is inexpensive, and having a custom email address has benefits. It appears more professional, never goes out of style, and paying for email means an advertiser isn’t combing through your emails to target you. (But so does using Apple Mail).

So Undecided

I want to reduce my expenses, and these recurring expenses seem like a sure-fire way to free me up. But many of them serve valuable functions.