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What to Cancel, Rotate, Replace, or Keep

A decision framework for every recurring charge — so you stop treating all subscriptions the same.

Most people fail at cutting subscriptions because every service gets the same question: "Do I still like this?" Like is not the bar. The bar is: cancel dead weight, rotate seasonal use, replace with a one-time alternative, keep only what earns its slot every month. Buy once. Borrow. Rotate. Replace. Cancel the rest — on purpose.

Cancel: if you would not sign up again today

Cancel is the default for anything unused in 30 days, duplicated elsewhere, or kept "just in case." Gym apps you do not open, cloud tiers full of screenshots, news sites you read zero times — same-day action. Use a checklist so you do not miss App Store stragglers.

Rotate: seasonal pleasure, not permanent rent

Streaming, cloud AI, premium creative trials — if use is bursty, rotate. One month on, months off. The rotation strategy applies to entertainment and increasingly to software. You are not giving up the service; you are refusing autopay for idle months.

Replace: one-time buys, library cards, open source

Before you keep paying, ask what owns the job. Notes → Obsidian. Passwords → Bitwarden. Docs → LibreOffice. Photos → local backup plus Ente or Immich. Learning → Khan Academy and your library. Replacement is the highest-leverage move when a free alternative is already excellent.

Keep: high frequency, high friction to replace

Keep what you use weekly and that would cost more time than money to replace — a password manager family vault you actually use, the one streaming service your household agrees on this quarter, phone plans after you already optimized them. Keeping is allowed; autopay without thought is not.

Revisit on renewal, not on guilt

Every keep decision gets a renewal date on the calendar. When the email hits, run the four-way test again — cancel, rotate, replace, keep. That is how a smaller subscription list stays small. Not everything needs to be rented forever.

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Best for

Anyone staring at an audit list unsure what to do with each line
Households mixing entertainment, software, and kid subscriptions
People who want rules, not vibes, for recurring spend

Can replace

Binary keep-or-cancel debates, Keeping services "for one show" year-round, Replacing subscriptions with other subscriptions by habit

Caveats

Work-paid tools stay in the keep column — just label them
Emotional attachments (music from your youth, a game you might return to) get a budget, not a veto
Replacement takes setup time; do not cancel until the alternative works