How to outsmart rising subscriptions so they don't break the bank

Daily Maverick

08-05-2025

It pays to get on top of them before they blow your budget.
I'm used to my annual Microsoft 365 Family subscription increasing by a nominal amount each year, but the 33% increase this year was a bit of a shocker.
That's when I tapped into the genius of my loyal Money Cents readers – and found an alternative for just R1,199.
According to the Discovery SpendTrend 2025 report, AI subscriptions saw the highest growth in share of spend, growing more than three times in 2024 compared with the previous year.
Discovery Bank chief executive Hylton Kallner points out that the bank offers a subscription management feature that allows users to manage card links to subscriptions and services.
'This includes creating and managing virtual cards, viewing transactions grouped by card or device and suspending or deleting card links no longer needed. Users can also manage where their card information is stored digitally by merchants,' Kallner told me after reading last week's Money Cents newsletter.
How to access the feature
Log in to the Discovery Bank app.
Select the 'cards' option and tap on 'digital cards'.
Choose the digital card you want to view and then scroll to view all linked subscriptions and transactions.
From there you can tap on a specific subscription to either suspend or delete it, managing your recurring payment.
Lineshree Reddy, country manager for Visa South Africa, said there had been increasing take-up of e-commerce subscriptions such as TakealotMORE.
'Our research [the Discovery SpendTrend 2025] shows that 62% of South Africans subscribe to three or more streaming services, and 29% of South Africans are willing to pay for subscription services that offer discounts or exclusive offers,' she said. Examples of typical offers or services could include next-day delivery and early access to offers such as Black Friday sales.
With the growth in subscriptions, Reddy said Visa had looked at ways to enable consumers to have a single view of payments across various merchants and where they are making payments.
'For example, kids today can subscribe to games on devices. The Visa subscription manager gives you a full view of where those transactions are happening and you have the ability to stop recurring payments,' she said.
Here are five ways to manage your subscriptions, regardless of which bank you're with:
Keep track: Go through your bills from the past six months or even as far back as a year, making a note of the subscriptions you are being charged for and the amounts. Make a note of this in your monthly budget and keep track as payments are debited.
Look at the bigger picture: The monthly subscription that is 'just R50 a month' works out to R600 a year and if you have four subscriptions of that amount, that's R2,400 a year. It adds up faster than you can blink.
Re-evaluate monthly: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Showmax, DStv… You are spoilt for choice in terms of streaming subscriptions, but the beauty of these is you can cancel them and resubscribe at a moment's notice. Plan which series or shows you want to watch and unsubscribe from the services you are not using each month.
Watch out for auto-renewals: Visit the sites you are subscribed to and uncheck 'automatic renewal' under payment options.
Bundle it or share it: In this financial environment, sharing is caring. Consider sharing subscriptions with a friend or sibling. For example, one of you pays for Press Reader and the other for DStv. You get both benefits at a reduced cost.
What you said
Money Cents readers shared the following advice:
Colleen said she contacted service providers to negotiate the annual increases.
Gavin had interesting feedback: he makes monthly payments into a separate savings account, which then covers annual costs such as his motor vehicle licence, vehicle service, holiday club contribution and TV licence.
'The transfer is made early in the month so I'm only really aware of the remaining balance within which to handle normal monthly living costs. On the due date the funds are readily available,' he said. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.