How do you handle recurring subscriptions?

Questions
1

Various providers accept crypto, however this requires manually charging it once a year or whenever you have it set to renew.

For something you want to automatically renew, be it your VPN or DNS or email, do you actually go through that hassle or do you use a private card*(privacy.com, mysudo…)

If one of your proton emails includes your real name I’m not sure there’s much benefit to hiding your payment info from them, however.

*while gift cards bought in cash are certainly private they also require recharging like a crypto wallet so not exactly a set and forget solution.

2

I use this app. It’s simple and easy to use and works well for your problem as it does for me:

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3

I personally selfhost firefly III, with autoingestion and subscriptions setup. While it is a way more heavy service, which needs some time to manage correctly, I also found it to be way more useful than my bank’s analytics.

For the email part, it could be useful to deny you owning the account, and it would be impossible if it is paid with your personal card.

4

There is still value in using anonymous payments if it’s possible. You may have a generic name. I have a friend whose name is actually John Smith. He was impossible to find on Facebook because there are so many of them.

I have the same problem as you, only it is slightly different. I use virtual credit cards, and one of my virtual credit cards expired when a payment for a specific service was recently due. The payment failed.

When I saw that it failed, I wanted to pay it immediately, manually. But it appears there is no way to do that. I have to wait for the service to try again automatically in a couple of days. I have contacted support, but because it’s the holidays, I haven’t heard back.

I personally hate that so many online subscription services do not let you renew your subscription manually if you want to. For example, if my annual subscription payment is due on January 30, and I will be automatically be debited that day, I want to be able to manually pay it in advance on January 25th if possible.

I want to do this for 2 reasons:

I use virtual credit cards, and by default, I block them right after I make a payment for a subscription, and remind myself to unblock them when my billing cycle approaches. I also limit the amount that can be spent on it for good measure. So if a service raises their price, they won’t be able to charge me without my explicit consent.

The other reason is that the way my virtual credit cards work, is that they have to be used manually first before they can be used for a recurring payment. Meaning that if I add a brand new VCC to a service I already pay for, the first payment with that card won’t go through if it’s automatic. I have to do it manually. That is because my VCCs have a dynamic CVV, i.e. a dynamic security code that changes every hour.

That means that if I add a new VCC to a service for the first time, the payment won’t go through unless I am being charged immediately. If the payment happens days or hours later, it will fail, because the security code will have changed. Only when I have already made a manual payment with a VCC, will it allow recurring charges to be made.

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5

I never rely on automatic subscription extend, even if its supported via traditional visa/mastercard/paypal since shit can happen. Cards expire, payment rejected etc etc. I just set a calendar reminder for each sub, usually it’ll notify me a month before service expire, i visit the provider site and manually extend my sub. Not a terrible inconvenience for less than 10 sub i have.

6

Indeed. It just sucks that most online services will not allow you to renew a subscription in advance. And the few that do, require that you cancel your subscription in order to renew it. For example, say your annual Notesnook subscriptions expires in 3 months. You cannot renew it now. The only way to do that is to cancel it. Once you cancel it, you will still have 3 months left of premium access. After you cancel it, you can renew it for another year.

But the problem with that is if you had a lifetime discounted subscription, and you cancel and renew, you will no longer have the discount. You will be charged at full price.

Reminding yourself every year to activate your credit card in order to allow your subscription payment to go through is doable. Having to do it for monthly subscription is annoying. And unfortunately, there are lots of services that don’t offer annual subscriptions, like Netflix.