Are Subscription Services Quietly Destroying Financial Wellness?

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Danilevich, Olia. (2020). Black Calculator beside Coins and Notebook [Photograph] Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-calculator-beside-coins-and-notebook-5466785/

Finances are being drained by unused subscriptions, prompting a shift toward transaction-based fees:


This perspective acknowledges the benefits subscriptions can provide, but it focuses on the hidden detriment recurring payments can create. It starts with the author realizing they had paid $500 for DuoLingo, something they never ended up using. I’m sure this company records activity and data from their customers, so wouldn’t they recognize this user is wasting money? Wouldn’t it be ethical to notify them?

The author might have had their notifications for the app turned off, but an email is also needed to make an account. It wasn’t until they checked their credit card bill that they realized what happened, and began questioning the larger implications of the subscription economy. With subscriptions, we begin to rely on technology more and more to simplify our lives; this now makes me question if those ethical notifications I mentioned earlier would only further extend that reliance.

After analyzing all their subscriptions, the author felt shocked by the long-term impact these services have, being that they all add up, and it’s hard to budget around multiple charges throughout the month. Is there an opportunity to format subscriptions in a way that you pay for them when it’s best, and not based on when you signed up? Could this potentially be run through the banks, where the banks will pay the subscriptions on the dates the services need, and the customer pays the banks through a personalized plan that best upholds their financial wellness? This may not affect the overall spending the customer dedicates to subscriptions, but it will create the awareness and reassurance that they know where and when their money is going.


References

Walden, J. (2020, February 10). Are Subscription Services Quietly Destroying Financial Wellness?. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/subscription-services-quietly-destroying-financial-wellness-/