Ever felt like your money disappears faster than you earn it?
You're not alone. Welcome to the world of subscription stacking. You know, that little habit of signing up for a streaming service here, a fitness app there, maybe a cloud storage plan, then forgetting about half of them — until the year after you receive a notification from your bank with $60 paid for a service you no longer need.
Let's unpack this mess and, more importantly, learn how to fight back.
What Is Subscription Stacking?
It’s the same as death by a thousand cuts, but bankruptcy by a thousand subscriptions.
It starts small: Netflix at $15 per month, Spotify at $10, a meditation app at $7, plus Apple iCloud or Google Drive storage, a gym app, language learning, and maybe a newsletter or two. On their own, they seem harmless. But together? You're spending $100–200 every month, often without realizing it.
What makes it worse is that most of these are on auto-renew. So while you're trying to manage bills, they quietly eat away your balance, especially when all your funds are stored on one card.
Why It’s So Hard to Notice
Because they’re designed to be that way.
Subscription fees are small, recurring, and perfectly timed to get lost among your other transactions. Add in five or ten of these, and suddenly you're wondering where your paycheck went.
It gets trickier when banks categorise them under inconspicuous labels like "online services" or "digital payments." You might spot a $12.99 charge labelled “ENT_SERVICES” and only realize weeks later it was a subscription you meant to cancel last year.
Want to track which app costs you $9.99 per month? It’s detective work, as you might have to cross-reference emails or dig through old account settings. And, honestly, most of us simply don’t have time for that.
How It Wrecks Your Monthly Budget
Subscription stacking sabotages the predictability of your budget, cause we simply forget that, apart from bills and groceries, we have 999 subscriptions to pay for.
Let’s say you’ve planned out your essentials — rent, food, transportation. And then mid-month hits: a $9 photo editing app, a $4.99 cloud storage renewal, a $12.99 premium news subscription. On average, people spend about $90 per month on subscriptions, making it approximately $1,000 per year, which could be spent on DCA for Bitcoin.
And what’s the saddest — it’s not your reckless spending. It’s untracked, auto-renewed charges that silently undo your best budgeting efforts. When you can’t anticipate what’s coming out of your account, you lose control — and that’s when financial stress kicks in.
Why Subscriptions Work so Well?
Subscription-based business models thrive because they expertly exploit behavioural economics — particularly the human tendency toward doing the same thing over and over and forgetfulness.
Once a user opts in, the psychological barrier to cancelling (even for unused services) becomes disproportionately high. This is known as the “set-it-and-forget-it” effect. Additionally, the low-friction nature of monthly micro-charges makes them less noticeable, especially when buried among dozens of other transactions.
Companies intentionally design retention loops: ambiguous billing descriptors, delayed cancellation processes, or bundling tactics that create perceived value. Over time, this leads to silent churn revenue — a stream of income from users who remain subscribed not out of utility, but out of oversight.
The Crypto Card That Actually Makes Sense
And there is crypto, which can already be spent on subscriptions, everyday purchases, and big-ticket items.
Firstly, it’s your chance to start from scratch, where your subscriptions are not yet linked to the card. Secondly, you can reconsider whether you actually need the service or not. Thirdly, with Kolo, you can easily separate subscriptions from your day-to-day spending. Users can issue a second card and use it just for subscriptions, so there are no more surprises on the main balance.
It’s like having two wallets:
- One for living your life
- One for feeding the monthly beast of Netflix, Spotify, and co.
This way, you always know how much is going out — and where it’s going.
Stop Subscriptions from Owning You
Subscriptions aren’t evil. But unchecked, they’re harmless at first, and dangerous when ignored.
So if your bank statement is reading like a playlist of forgotten services, it’s time to reclaim your budget. Use smart tools. Split your spending. And let your money work for you, not your subscriptions. Kolo makes that possible.
