Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#301

Post by jcranmer » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:36 PM UTC

schlauerfox wrote: post #269

jcranmer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm unusually anal retentive about this, but I have every bank account, PayPal, Venmo, both credit cards, every brokerage, 401(k), HSA, IRA, mortgage, everything... in Quicken This is something I'd like to have, but I don't want to use Quicken. Partially because I pretty much exclusively use Linux at home, and I don't want to have something as important as financials reliant on a maybe-it-will-work WINE trans…

GNUcash aint pretty, but it works.

My understanding it suffers from the "everyone is abandoning OFX" problem, leading it to be unable to ingest the data it needs.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#302

Post by CivBase » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:36 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

The line between reasonable responsibiliy and unreasonable responsibility is subjective and blurry. We can generally agree it's my responsibility to not waste my life savings on novelty mugs, but it's not my responsibility to keep my money in an armored vault at home in case a burgler breaks in and tries to steal it.

Laws exist to protect people from bad actors so our time and efforts can be better spent on things that are valuable to us and society.

Is 30 minutes a month an unreasonable responsibility to protect against companies taking advantage of people with unutilized subscriptions? Should the law be updated to enable people to save people that time and effort? Maybe. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to at least consider.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#303

Post by hartator » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #167

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was…

> They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that > And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.

Maybe next time don't work for them? It's not too late to give money to charity though.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#304

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #107

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

People tend to act shocked when I tell them my finance app requires me to enter transactions manually and doesn't magically categorize everything. You spend a third of your life working for that money, surely you spend 5 minutes at most tracking how you spend it.

What value do you feel that you gain from all that categorization effort?

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#305

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:38 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #259

rectang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her…

> My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. Why? That's much worse. If anything is going to do a recurring charge to me, I want it to go through a credit card which offers a layer of indirection. I never aut…

[deleted]

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#306

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:39 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #294

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I get a free trial of Prime, I immediately set a reminder on my phone to cancel it in a month. It's really not that hard.

It's even easier to reject all free trials of everything. That's what I do.

I habitually reject subscriptions and automatic payments, too, as far as possible, so I can retain full control of the flow & timing of my expenses.

(For services where it's not possible, I subscribe them to a single credit card, which I treat as though it were another utility bill.)

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#307

Post by toastercat » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:42 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

I don't disagree with you, but lots of people do not take charge of their financial health simply because they do not know any better, or are too trusting to entities that will loan them money. And they are that way likely because their parents were that way too.

A common thing I hear when talking about things like the student loan crisis and the housing market crash of the late 2000s is "well no one forced them to take out those loans" or "I took out a loan and I paid it off, why can't they?" But when it's as prevalent an issue that more than half of undergrad students in the U.S. are in debt, and the fact that poor people taking out subprime mortgages just so they can have somewhere to live can cause a global financial disaster, it starts making me think -- yeah maybe it is the "government's fault". Maybe us smart people on the top have to understand not everyone is as smart as us, and we have to build a system that works for all the truly clueless folk.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#308

Post by rx_tx » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:42 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #193

idopmstuff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a temporary credit card number that's only authorized for one payment. When it doesn't work the second year, they'll let you know you need to pay. Sign up and immediately cancel/turn off billing, so you aren't charged again next year (again, they'll send you a bunch of notices ahead of the end of your service). Put a calendar reminder in for 11.5 months out from when you sign up. In Slack, /remind me in 11.5 mont…

My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her…

would a service like privacy[dot]com which generates custom one-off credit card numbers with custom spend limits be useful? (Not affiliated, I just use them from time-to-time exactly for that purpose)

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#309

Post by gardenhedge » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:43 PM UTC

woobar wrote: post #255

jjeaff wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the app automatically categorizes things, you don't ever have to look at it. doing it yourself requires that you review every transaction individually.

Categorization and review are two different processes. The app I use will download and categorize, but I still have to review/accept each transaction. What is the benefit of manual entry in this case?

Why are both of you not naming the apps you use?

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#310

Post by themacguffinman » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #120

Alupis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The blame falls also on businesses which take money for services they don't deliver. They often know, and otherwise often could know, when subscribers are not using the service. If you're a business, you should earn your revenue, otherwise you are frauds. I disagree. I routinely go months in between using some of my various subscriptions - be it Netflix, Hulu, Audible, etc. I would be very upset if they cancelled o…

I don't really see how this follows. A perfectly reasonable option that doesn't affect your use case at all would be "don't charge a customer who didn't use the service during that period." AWS doesn't charge me for an empty S3 bucket, Netflix shouldn't charge for zero minutes of video watched that month. Simple as! The downside, of course, is that this does mean you can't ride the Personal Responsibility bicycle and…

It screws over other use cases because it changes the economics of these streaming services. Monthly subscriptions for media, especially ones like Netflix, account for bingeing followed by dead periods amortized into the monthly price. Only counting active periods will break that amortization and the monthly price increases as a result.

If someone doesn't binge and their lifestyle includes watching things more consistently, they will pay a higher price to subsidize people who don't manage their own money. It is of course possible to accommodate everything by adding all kinds of choices but it costs time and effort and complexity to setup those systems, and those costs are always passed down to the consumer. As someone who manages my own financial life, I'd prefer not to pay those costs for people who don't.

I doubt the ability to look down will go away either, people who lack even this minimal amount of personal responsibility have endless ways of losing money and falling behind those who strive for personal responsibility. It's very costly and difficult for third parties to fix this kind of financial apathy.