Spending Less: Slimming Down My Subscriptions

As I use more software and services, I realized I get a lot of subscription payment emails every month. I recently reviewed all my internet subscriptions and found plenty of places to save money.

Tencent Video

This used to be my only video subscription, mainly because I was following a bunch of anime adapted from web novels. Tencent Video does have more anime IP than most platforms. The ones I follow:

• Soul Land
• Battle Through the Heavens
• Swallowed Star
• Jade Dynasty
• Throne of Seal

Xiaomi Video Membership + Bundled iQIYI

Mainly because we have a Xiaomi TV at home and the kids want to watch.

Apple Music

I got three free months when I bought a device during the pandemic, then kept renewing. Since I am deep in the Apple ecosystem, the experience is smooth. I usually listen to nostalgic songs while commuting or coding at work.

Fan Book (formerly Fan Deng Reading)

I have listened for four years. In the first two years I listened a lot because there were many books I had not heard of. After two years, I had basically finished most of the content on the platform, so I do not plan to renew. These days my main inputs are physical books and ebooks.

Shengdong Hutong

I listen to “Shengdong Morning Coffee” every morning for about 15 minutes to catch up on tech news in China and abroad. I love the quality of this team: young, energetic, and professional. Out of pure fandom, I joined their membership. It unlocks some paid podcasts (Not Just Money, Jumping Into the Rabbit Hole), but the ROI is not great. If I am to renew next year, I hope they can give me more reasons. For now, I do not really recommend it or need it.

WeRead (WeChat Reading)

This year I used WeRead to replace my old Apple Books + ZLibrary freebie setup.

Two main reasons:

• Notes can be managed in one place and exported, which is convenient.
• The audiobook experience is great, especially for commuting.

AgentNEO (VPN)

A hard requirement. If you know, you know.

Blog Maintenance Costs

Right now my blog costs are only for the domain (GoDaddy). Everything else is free.

Duolingo (Family Plan)

A great tool for language learning. I am using a friend’s family plan for free. You can also find group buys on platforms like Xiaohongshu, which is pretty affordable. Do not buy it alone, it is too expensive.

Cubox-Pro

My main information inputs come from three sources:

• Books (print or digital)
• RSS subscriptions
• WeChat public accounts
• Other social apps

For everything except books, I often read something once and want to go deeper later or save it. I put those items into Cubox. When writing a blog post, planning, or thinking through a topic, I search tags and reprocess that information. For me, Cubox is essential.

iCloud

iCloud is great for syncing photos and files across devices, but once I exceeded 200GB it stopped being cost-effective. The 200GB plan is RMB 21/month; the next tier is 2TB at RMB 68/month, over RMB 800/year, which hurts. After some research, I chose a NAS solution to solve file sync and backup once and for all, saving that annual 800+ cost. Of course the initial NAS investment is higher than 800, so it is still about long-term cost. I compared ZSpace and UGREEN and finally chose the UGREEN DX4600+ with an 8TB drive. Two months later, UGREEN released a new NAS with software quality issues, so I was lucky that the older software is more stable. The experience has been good so far.

Todoist

I am not a heavy task manager. After about six months of subscription, I felt the value was not there for me. I eventually replaced Todoist with a Notion ToDo List template.

Tutu Bookkeeping

I am a slightly obsessive programmer, so whether I am coding, writing docs, or dealing with daily information, I like to quantify things and find a sense of accomplishment in visualized data. I started using Tutu Bookkeeping after a recommendation from SSPAI. After about six months, I ran into two big issues: I did not log transactions promptly, and I was not comfortable recording sensitive financial data in an internet product. So for timeliness and privacy, I dropped it.

I switched to the open-source solution beancount. I do bookkeeping quarterly. I export raw transactions from WeChat and Alipay into Excel, do some light processing with a Python script, and generate beancount-formatted text. After minor tweaks, it is ready. The final result looks like this:

Sam’s Club Premium Membership

In middle age, I have discovered that going to the supermarket can be entertainment. My wife and I both love shopping at Sam’s Club. The quality is top-tier, and in Beijing they now offer 1-hour delivery, which is fantastic. If we order something, it arrives within an hour. The premium membership gives cashback that you can use on next month’s purchases, so once you count the cashback, it is basically the same as the 200+ regular membership.

[Podcast] Shengdong Morning Coffee

[Podcast] Between Reality and Fiction

[AIGC] 302.ai

[RSS] RSS feeds are one of my most important channels for high-quality information. If you need it, add my contact and I will send it.

After optimizing, my annual cost dropped from RMB 3,200 to RMB 2,100 (still expensive). Next I plan to fully leverage my NAS capabilities and maybe replace even more paid subscriptions.