Back in March my bank sent me a new debit card after a weird charge from a gas station two states away. Nothing came of it. The bank caught it and the money went back the same week. What came after was the part I didn’t expect. For about two weeks I kept getting “your payment didn’t go through” emails from companies I hadn’t thought about in ages, because they were all still trying to bill the old card.

Credit (optional): Photo by Jakub Zerdzicki on Pexels

That’s how I found out how much stuff I was still paying for. A couple of them I’d have sworn on my life I cancelled.

I run a dog grooming business out of my garage in Manchester, Connecticut. I’m not short on bank statements, I’m short on evenings. When I finally sat down to deal with it, I used MoneyPilot. I’d been scrolling past its Instagram ads for months. This is what that looked like.

What I wanted out of it

Honestly, I wanted one list. I didn’t want to sit there with three months of statements and a highlighter guessing which charge was which, because I’d done that once before, in 2022, and gave up halfway through. I wanted every recurring charge in one place and the dead ones gone before bed.

Setting it up and seeing the list

The signup was quick. The part that made me stop was connecting my bank. I sat there with my thumb over the button for a minute. MoneyPilot’s FAQ says the connection goes through Plaid and it’s read-only. The app can see transactions but it can’t move money. I already use Plaid for Venmo. I went ahead.

The list came up faster than I thought it would. Every recurring charge with what it costs, and it points out the ones that cost the most and the ones you haven’t used in a while. Mine had eleven things on it. I knew about six.

The five I didn’t know about, or had forgotten:

• A meditation app at $14.99 a month. I meditated twice. Maybe three times.
• A photo storage plan I’d upgraded when my old phone was full, billing yearly.
• A streaming service I signed up for to watch one show with my son Danny, who has since moved to Hartford and has his own login for everything.
• A recipe app from a New Year’s thing.
• A “premium” upgrade on a scheduling app I’d switched away from for the business.

The meditation app is the one that got me. I actually said something out loud to the dog. Fifteen bucks a month for something I opened twice is the kind of thing I’d yell at my sister about.

Actually cancelling them

This is the part the title is about. Here’s exactly how it went.

Alt text: Laptop open on a kitchen counter beside a fruit bowl and a small plant

Credit (optional): Photo by Jakub Zerdzicki on Pexels

I did it on a Tuesday night at the kitchen table with Wheel of Fortune on in the other room. For each one I tapped into it in MoneyPilot and it gave me the way out: a direct link to that company’s cancel page and the steps to get through it. For most of them that was a couple of minutes. The recipe app took one screen. The streaming service tried to offer me a discount, I said no, done.

The photo storage one was the annoying one. It walked me through three different “are you sure?” pages and one that tried to downgrade me instead of cancelling. MoneyPilot got me to the right page. After that it was me and three rounds of “No, I really want to cancel.”

The scheduling app wanted me to email them. Fine. I emailed them.

Long story short, four were gone that night in maybe twenty-five minutes and the fifth was gone after an email the next morning. I’d been putting that off for over a year.

What stood out after the cleanup

The alerts are what I’ve actually kept using. A few weeks later I got a heads-up that the web hosting for my grooming site was about to renew for the year. I kept it, because I need it, but I liked getting to decide instead of finding out on my statement. Later on it flagged a price increase on the one streaming service I kept. I’m keeping that too, grudgingly.

The other thing I noticed is that I’ve stopped having that low-level dread when I open my bank app. I know what’s on there now.

What didn’t work for me

I’d pictured MoneyPilot cancelling things for me. MoneyPilot’s own subscription page talks about cancelling in one tap. What I actually got for every one of mine was the link and the steps, and then the cancelling happened on the other company’s website with me doing the clicking. Their FAQ says as much, that they give you direct links and step-by-step guidance rather than cancelling directly. I just hadn’t read the FAQ before I started.

Credit (optional): Photo by Jep Gambardella on Pexels

The other small thing is that MoneyPilot is a subscription itself. I did laugh at that. The five I cancelled added up to more than it costs me, so I’m not losing sleep over it, but I did write its renewal date on the calendar in the kitchen, same as everything else.

Would I do it again?

I would, and I’d do it sooner. If your statements look like mine did, a pile of little charges you half recognize, this is the fastest way I’ve found to get it sorted. The list is the whole value for me. Once I could see everything in one place, cancelling was just a Tuesday night job.

If I were starting over, I’d go straight to MoneyPilot’s tool to cancel unwanted subscriptions instead of waiting for a bad card to shake them loose. That would’ve saved me a year of meditation app charges, give or take.