Subscription Update for the Year Ahead

∞ Subscription Update for the Year Ahead In a move no one could have predicted, I managed to cut my subscription costs this year (by $7). I drastically reduced the number of subscriptions, too. In December of 2024, I had a whopping 55 monthly subscriptions that cost me $193 a month, a number that includes software developers, bloggers I support financially , web hosting companies, network services like my DNS and VPN providers, and pay TV. This year, I managed to pare it down to 43. The Breakdown Movies and TV: $32.40 a month for Netflix, YouTube Premium, Plex Pass , and Infuse. I don't have cable-I cut that cord a long time ago. App Store Subscriptions: $44.15 a month for 12 different apps, some of which I've been using for years, like Day One , Carrot Weather, and Drafts . The total includes the fee for Apple Music and the iCloud 2 TB plan. Other Software and Tech Services: $79.88 a month for cloud storage, DNS , Usenet, AI, email , RSS , search , and a couple of automation apps. Blogging: $25.91 a month to four different blogging platforms , four domains, and an analytics service. IndyWeb Support: $9.50 a month to seven different bloggers (including Kottke ). Why? Some of the costs I picked up in 2025 are associated with my decision to de-Google in the name of privacy. I'm now paying for Kagi, a search engine; Fastmail for email ; and ChatGPT instead of Google Gemini. Some of the money I saved by canceling all pay TV services except Netflix went towards a subscription to a Usenet provider and indexer. Substantially less of my income is going to billionaires now. I'm not paying a dime to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or Meta, and they have much less access to my data. Most of my app subscriptions go to indie developers and employee-owned companies. I no longer subscribe to 13 of the App Store apps that I was paying for last year, mostly because I found that I no longer used them enough to justify the cost; I didn’t rage-quit anyone's app. I dropped a location tracker, a list maker, a couple of quotes apps, two related to movies and TV, and one that went out of business, Pocket. I use Inoreader , my RSS provider for read-it-later services, now. I'm Not Mad but that Doesn't Mean I Like It Obviously, I like the stuff I'm paying for enough to let go of some dough. Almost everything I use has some cost incurred by the owner for backend support. Development continues, and new features get added. My most expensive subscription used to be The New York Times at $24 a month. Today, it's ChatGPT, a company whose morals and ethics are suspect but whose product basically taught me the skills I needed to get into self-hosting this year. I don't think I could have mastered Linux as quickly without its help. I know that it's a privilege to...

Preview: ~500 words