Serious question - is it really that hard to just have a spreadsheet?
I can't imagine having so many subscriptions that a pretty simple spreadsheet couldn't handle it.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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I have this thought everytime I hear about Rocket money. To have enough money to completely forget about all the "subscriptions" you have is wild to me.
I hear you. If I already had a list of the subscriptions I have, then yeah that would work. But I am a forgetful person, so I need (or I suppose, want) a tool that will get me to that starting point.
I read about ActualBudget and although it's not the most useful thing for me (I only have one bank account and my finances are about as simple as you can get), I spun up a docker container for it anyway out of curiosity. It allows you to categorise all your transactions and set up rules with simple name matches and even regex for more advanced matching. It took me a couple of hours to create all my rules but future transactions should now be categorised automatically. There's also a tab where you can setup charts and graphs to see visually how much you've spent on certain categories in the last X days and so on.
It might be overkill for what you're looking for, but you might find it useful or just nice to have for other reasons, and it certainly should cover your use case.
Your bank has an option to export transaction history to a CSV file that can be imported into a spreadsheet.
Anything more automated is going to sell your data or cost a subscription or both.
Self-host Wallos. Open-source, get notifications before renewal, send notifications to others to let them know payment is upcoming.
That definitely looks promising. What's the workflow for getting the subscription data into the application?
Just FYI about rocket money, I looked into using it before and found out they actually charge you for things they cancel.
I don't remember exactly how it worked, but something like a percentage of the potential money you saved. So if you have a $100/mo subscription that they help you cancel, that is not $10 that goes to them, but someting like $120 (10% of the annual cost, not monthly).
I'm making those numbers up, but the idea was something like that. It felt pretty scummy when I read about it because they don't make it super obvious how they're making money.
Well, you probably have a bank, and that bank has a website. I bet they even have a section called Transaction history ir something similar. Probably even search and sort.
Tldr: look at your bank statements it will show you everything you pay for monthly.