By Harold Phillips | June 2026
Last verified: June 2026
It started with a $16.99 charge I didn't recognize.
I was looking at my Wealthsimple statement (I do this monthly, which I know makes me sound insufferable) and there it was. Neon, I thought. But I cancelled Neon. I was pretty sure I cancelled Neon. I checked my email. There was a cancellation confirmation from… November 2024. And then a re-subscription confirmation from three weeks later. I had signed up again because they had a "come back" offer. I had forgotten about it completely. Seventeen months of $16.99.
That's $288.83 I paid for a service I used maybe four times.
This happens. This is the thing I keep trying to explain to people who think subscription audits are obsessive or weird. It's not about the individual subscription. It's about the accumulation — the slow drift of monthly charges that each feel too small to bother cancelling, until suddenly you're $97/month lighter than you should be.
The Problem with "Just $X a Month"
The pricing is the manipulation. Not in some sinister, intentional way (well, maybe a little intentional), but $16.99/month sounds like nothing. $8.99 sounds like nothing. $4.99 sounds like a rounding error. Your brain doesn't add these up automatically. Mine doesn't. And companies know this.
There's actual research on this. One study found people underestimate their monthly subscription spending by an average of 200%. I believe it, because I underestimate mine every quarter, and I run a literal spreadsheet. Imagine what happens if you're not tracking at all.
The Canadian context makes this worse, not better. Prices here frequently differ from US prices, and not in our favour. Services that cost $10 USD quietly charge $14-16 CAD, using some exchange rate that was set during the Harper government and hasn't been revisited since. You sign up during a promotional period, the rate bumps after three months, and unless you're watching your statements closely, you just absorb it. In 2026, a wave of popular streaming and productivity services has rolled out another round of price increases, making the gap between what Canadians pay and what Americans pay even wider than it was a year ago — which makes the audit habit more important, not less.
What I Cut This Time
Quarterly audit, Q1 2026. I go through every recurring charge in my accounts: Wealthsimple chequing, my credit card, and the joint account I have with my partner for shared expenses. I flag anything that's renewed in the last 90 days and ask myself: did I actively use this?
The Neon thing was the most embarrassing find, but not the only one.
There was a backup storage subscription at $9.99/month I set up two laptops ago. The files it was backing up no longer exist. There was a meditation app my partner and I both downloaded during a stressful week in January, $12.99/month, neither of us had opened it in six weeks. There was a newsletter subscription that had bundled in some "bonus archive access" for $4/month extra that I definitely did not intend to enable. And there was a VPN service I use maybe twice a year for travel that I'd switched from annual billing to monthly at some point, which tripled the effective cost.
Total: $97.96/month. Call it $1,175/year.
That's not nothing. That's a chunk of an RRSP contribution. That's a cheap flight somewhere. That's a lot of No Frills hauls.
My Take: The Opt-Out Model Is Working Exactly As Intended
I want to be clear that I'm not blaming myself for this. I mean, a little. I did re-subscribe to Neon. But the architecture of subscription services is specifically designed to reduce friction on sign-up and maximize friction on cancellation. Free trials that require a credit card. Cancellation flows that are seven screens deep. Re-engagement emails with "we want you back" deals. Annual plan upsells that feel cheaper per month until you do the math.
The meditation app cancellation took me through a flow that asked me three separate times whether I was sure, showed me data about how many days I'd used it, and offered me a three-month discount before it would actually let me leave. Honest question: what does that tell you about how they feel about their product? If it was genuinely valuable, they wouldn't need to hold the door shut.
The VPN situation is on me — I switched to monthly intentionally and forgot to switch back. But the Neon re-subscription? That "come back" offer email was timed to catch me on a Saturday morning when I was half-awake and vaguely remembered liking the service. It worked perfectly. I am not smarter than their retention team. I've accepted this.
The Other Side
The counterargument is that subscriptions are still a good deal compared to what they replaced. And that's true. Netflix at $20-something a month beats renting DVDs. Spotify beats buying albums. Whatever productivity app you're paying for is probably cheaper than the software licence it replaced. I'm not saying subscription pricing is inherently evil.
But that argument applies to subscriptions you use. It doesn't apply to seventeen months of Neon you forgot you had.
The other thing people say is: "I'd rather just be flexible and pay monthly than commit to a year." I get it. But the math almost never works out. Annual pricing on something you use is better. Monthly pricing on something you're "just trying" is a leak waiting to happen. The question is whether you're honest with yourself about which category you're in.
My partner thinks I'm too rigid about this. They're probably right that I've cancelled a couple of things I ended up re-subscribing to later, which did cost me more. The Neon situation being Exhibit A. But I'd rather audit too aggressively and occasionally re-subscribe than let things drift unchecked. That's just my read on the tradeoff.
What Actually Works
I keep a spreadsheet. I know. But it's not complicated. It's a list of service, monthly cost, last used date, and billing date. I update it when I add something new. Four times a year I go through it and ask the "last used date" question honestly.
The other thing I do: I use a separate credit card for subscriptions. Not for any sophisticated reason, just because it makes the monthly statement easier to audit. Everything on that card is recurring. If I see something I don't recognize, it's new or I forgot.
A few people have asked me about virtual credit cards for trials, which is a real technique. The idea is you use a card number that expires or caps at a certain amount, so you can't be charged after the trial ends. Honest answer: I haven't needed to go that far. The spreadsheet catches it. But I understand the appeal, especially if you sign up for a lot of things.
The most important habit is the pause before subscribing. Not a long one, just enough to ask: will I actually use this, and what's the cancellation process? If the answer to the second question is "unclear," that's information.
Where This Leaves Me
Ninety-seven dollars a month is back in my pocket. That's not a win, exactly. It's a recovery. I let those charges accumulate over the quarter, and the audit found them. The system worked. But the system only works because I run it.
I think most people know, vaguely, that they're overpaying for subscriptions. It's one of those things that sits in the back of your head alongside "I should check my RRSP" and "I should probably call my dentist." It doesn't feel urgent until you actually sit down and look.
Here's the thing: the audit takes about 45 minutes. Once a quarter. I do it with a coffee on a Sunday morning, same day I do my quarterly savings check. The first time I did it, I cut almost $200/month. That number has gotten smaller as I've gotten better at catching things early. But it's never been zero.
It's never been zero.
This is an opinion piece based on my personal experience. Your situation might be different, so do your own research.