Money hacks From TV to toilet rolls: how to save on subscriptions

You can normally only sign up for free trials once, but there are lots of them to work your way through, especially when it comes to music, audiobooks, television and film streaming.

- Emma Lunn

Make the most of free trials

For example, Spotify Premium offers a month free (normally £11.99 a month), Apple TV+ a free seven-day trial (then £8.99 a month), BFI Player 14 days free (then £6.99 a month), Audible 30 days free (then £7.99 a month)... the list goes on.

The key to making the most of free trials is to be sure to cancel before the trial ends and the payments begin.

The cancellation game If a subscription starts looking dear, Vix Leyton, a consumer expert and co-host of the Spendology podcast, suggests starting the cancellation process and seeing what happens. "This can trigger 'retention' offers poor old existing customers wouldn't get to see otherwise," she says. "This could be anything from being able to pause for no extra cost to slashing the bill. If you choose to walk away, you may still get a follow-up 'break-up' message incentivising you to come back."

Do a subscription audit It's easy to lose track of everything you have signed up for - so keep a check on what you are paying for. For example, many people find they have signed up to several cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive, when just one will do.

"Look at passive subscriptions quietly winging out of your account and evaluate if you're getting better-value usage than just signing up again when you need it," Leyton says. "If you've been paying for something that you haven't used for more than a year, then it's worth cancelling and using that 'found money' to set up a direct debit or payment out for that amount to go directly into a savings account or to explore longer-term savings and investments."