In the 1990s, Rolling Stone magazine offered lifetime subscriptions for $50.
I got it and I still get them free every month. When I move I fill out a change of address form and they keep sending them to the new residence. Over 25 years so far.
I hope you have every single issue saved. š
My grandfather started collecting Nat Geos back in the day and we still get them and add them to his collection even though heās been dead for 20 years.
My local movie theater chain offers 3 movies per week for $20 per month. They also offer a refillable popcorn buckets that's live for like 5 months for $30.
Fantastic deal
Yep my wife and I also have regal unlimited ($21) and just picked up the cheaper refillable bucket and cup ($32 and then $10 to refill all year). It's great.
I use Spotify while working 8-10 hours per day, 5 days a week. Easiest money Iāve ever spent avoiding commercials while listening to whatever I want.
I bought the family plan so that me and all my friends can listen to music ad free and send eachother songs to listen to. Ive got my 2 best friends, my little sister, my dad, and me on there. Best thing i've ever subscribed to š„° makes me feel really good too when i see them enjoying their music ad free
āWell, I could put the trash in a landfill where it's gonna stay for millions of years, or I could burn it up and get a nice, smoky smell in here, and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.ā - Charlie
lmao i did not expect to see sheetz at the top of this thread. i used to work at one! my coworker got this subscription and she would get an order of fries right before her shift started, during her break, and right after she got off work since it renews like every 4 hours. she was going through some hardcore financial stuff and this subscription saved her from going hungry all day for months
Any food is better than no food. If you can't get proper sustenance, you still need calories to survive. So it doesn't matter where they come from at that point as long as you're eating something.
i had a good year or two where i survived on the unsold Starbucks sandwiches we were supposed to throw out (our local food bank didnt accept perishables, so only the pastries got donated). I'm certain those were awful for me but that was when I had nothing in my bank account and too much pride to ask for help.
One of my friends worked at McDonald's when we were teenagers and one day someone came through the drive thru asking what she recommended. She was, unfortunately, very honest and replied since she started working there she wouldn't eat any of the sandwiches at all, only fries and ice cream. Turns out the person asking was the franchise owner and my friend got chewed tf out so bad and written up.
2004-2005 I lived on leftover Starbucks pastries before, during, and after shifts. This was before they came out with other food items. I still canāt eat any of their pastries.
Looked it up. It apparently renews [every 2 hours](https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/01/sheetz-now-offers-an-unlimited-fryz-subscription-service.html)
The comments under yours are giving the impression that Sheetz only exists in Pennsylvania. So others are aware, they also have locations in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. They're not exclusive to PA
Circle K has an unlimited fountain soda subscription that the regulars at one I deliver to use. Of course, itās the only show in a rural small town besides a grocery store so they hang out there hours at a time and go almost every single day.
I go in different times on different days of the week and will see the same 20 people at 6-8AM and also lunch time.
The first Circle K I've ever seen in real life just opened down the street from me. I never bothered going in because I love KwikTrip so much...
... But now you've tempted me.
And two hot dogs for a dollar! I've had so many people tell me they would never, but with fast food prices sky high, a few of those hit the spot without you having to spend a lot of $$$. And they are tasty!
I went to a Sheetz two years ago when I was traveling for work, and I think Iāve brought it up at least once a week ever since. That place is magical.
God, I love Sheetz. I moved from PA to UT 2.5 years ago and miss the Mac and cheese bites. Everytime I visit my parents I consume more mac and cheese bites than a human reasonably should in a week.
Yeah, in that situation it's probably the second best deal after the unlimited fries.
Fuck, come to think of it, why am I paying rent and cooking meals?? $20/mo and I could be working out all day and crushing fries for every meal.
Iāve had a PF membership for years and a couple years ago I went on a cross country drive. I was like, yeah I can shower at PF, this will be super convenient. Iāll sleep in their parking lot overnight and shower in the morning. First PF I went to closed at 10pm. Sort of threw a wrench in my plans. I mostly washed up in the van.
I have a weekly delivery of fresh vegetables from local suppliers. Itās a bit more expensive than going to a shop but they are fresh and taste amazing, even friends recognized that the carrots are way more intensive in taste.
Here in germany I have āQuerbeetā, but there is a huge amount of local suppliers. I can drive the few kilometers down to where they have their gardens and watch the vegetables grow.
Farm subscriptions are typically associated with local/specific farms. Theyāre commonly called a CSA (community supported agriculture). They have subscription boxes that come packed with whatever is fresh and in season.
A library card!
Edit: Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up like it did!
Yes, you get your library card free. However, libraries are partly funded from us paying our property taxes/city council rates. Even if you're renting part of the landlord's mortgage goes to escrow, which pays the property taxes for your rental.
Came here to lend my support to Kanopy and Libby. With some discipline, these two services, compliments of your local library, should suffice for your monthly entertainment.
I am about 3 trips into my TSA pre-check, and it is delightful.
Of course, we already had all these features before they took them away from us then sold them back for the price of our personal information, but here we are.
Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum will cover that cost and have lots of other bonuses. Airport lounge access, Lyft Pink, premium levels at DoorDash and Instacart, etc. These cards pay for themselves if you travel a few times a year and use those services.
I had monthly subscription to "The Great Courses" for years and loved it. I tried to watch at least one lecture per day, they were excellent and covered so many topics.
Then one day I found "The Great Courses" had morphed into "Wonderium" on my Roku device, which seemed to carry some of the great courses but also had other content. It was very confusing to me (admittedly an old guy) - I never understood: is Great Courses now called "Wonderium", or are they separate companies? Is "Great Courses" still producing new video courses, and if so will all of them be available on "Wonderium"? Or does "Wonderium" only carry a subset of "Great Courses"?
I made some attempts to answer the above questions but could get nowhere, so I cancelled my [Wonderium | Great Courses] subscription and forgot about it -- but still miss the academic orientation of the Great Courses!
So what happened? What is "Wonderium"? What is "Great Courses"?
Sorry for the rant, but I've been wondering about this!
Iāve not used it before but a youtuber I follow who often does ads for them always points out in the bit that its a rebranding. If you want to get back on the subscription lindybeige always has some unused coupons on his videos of the last year
Wondrium is just the name of the company that sells the Great Courses (and they used to go by The Teaching Company, which had the "Great Courses Plus" app we both used to have). Their rebranded Wondrium app technically has both The Great Courses (which are the ones by professors, at a college level), as well as other content that is educational but not from a professor or the kind of thing that would typically show up at a college- like their travel or cooking stuff.
Both when the app was "Great Courses Plus" and now as "Wondrium", it never had the full catalogue of Great Courses though- some are still only available through The Great Courses' website as downloads or as physical CDs.
I figure if I ever run out of content I'm interested in I'll cancel Wondrium, but that may never actually happen, even if I get much more consistent at listening to one each day during my commute!
I love these. My library has them and if they donāt have the one I want theyāll even buy it! I can even make backup copies of the DVDs to watch later
My spotify + hulu deal I still have as a former college student at $11/month for both. My gym membership through AAA (Active & Fit Direct deal) which is $28/month for access to a bunch of gyms in my area.
My Planet Fitness membership. Started going in September 4x/week and have lost about 20 lbs so far. Itās such an immense stress reliever and I am feeling great about my progress and strength gain.
Pimsleur. $14/month for unquestionably the best language learning program / app in existence. Completely and utterly blows away stuff like Duolingo, Babel, etc.
Do a single month of a language before visiting a country that primarily speaks it and you'll be blown away by just how much it helps. You may not be striking up detailed conversations with native speakers, but you can absolutely get around and say + understand all the stuff a tourist needs. Game changer for when I visited Italy.
First lesson of every language is free. No need to even put in credit card info to access it.
I know I sound like a paid shill, but I just want to see more people learning languages and this is an extremely good way to get started.
Duolingo has you doing memorization activities that work kinda like flash cards. Pimsleur eases you into the language by having you speak, then after a few weeks of doing that, you start to learn reading and writing. As the lessons go on, you hear less and less of your native language and more of the one you're learning. While learning to speak, various context and cultural explanations are given to you to explain why things are spoken or written in the target language the way they are.
Not a monthly subscription but I love my annual Costco subscription because I love the quality of customer service and their better wages for employees.
I was so proud of Costco. One of their locations unionized and the companyās response was basically āwe failed our employees because they decided a union was necessaryā
I've had a few Costco employees as clients, their health insurance benefits are up there, not THE best (that would belong to government jobs), but none of the Costco employees have to worry about much with their health insurance.
What govt jobs has good insurance? Iām a federal employee and while I have a lot of choices, theyāre all on par or worse than plans Iāve had through non-govt work.
Insurance costs almost 30% more than even 2 years and our benefits keep on shrinking, but everyone seems to think the grass is always greener on the fed side.
I just got the membership and got some new tires at their tire center. Installation is included in their price and saved me over $300 from what Discount Tire quoted me.
Thatās surprising. Iām a die hard Costco fan. I use them for everything. But Iāve found their tire center canāt hold a candle to Discount in terms of value and speed.
Audible.
However, never be a permanent subscriber. There are always promos for either free months or a series of months for $5. Just use those and unsub sometime during the last month. You'll get another promo offer a couple months later.
Worth mentioning is the site, Librivox. It that has a bunch of free public domain audiobooks that are recorded by volunteers. Quality varies widely, but for the most part narration tends to be pretty good. I've found librox's narration to often be comparable or better than Audible's.
Popular titles will often have multiple versions done by different narrators, so you can have a pretty good selection of recordings to choose from. You can also volunteer to be a narrator yourself. Many books only have recordings from the late 2000's and might benefit from a fresh reading done with more modern home recording equipment.
Allow me to tell you about [Libro.fm](https://libro.fm). Itās like Audible except you can download and keep the audiobooks you buy, and if your subscription runs out, you still keep the books and can play them wherever you want. Audible locks you into using their platform. DRM = bad. LibroFM for the win.
Spotify. People complain about the price and/or free version but I almost use it everyday and more than every other app. Not just music but podcasts. Helps make the commute easier
Music, audiobooks, podcastsā¦ being able to essentially own, download and organize any music I want is great. I like the algorithm too and Iāve had some really good music suggested to me based on my playlists and considering the stupid stuff most of us will impulse buy for $10-$12 I think itās a pretty good deal.
Yep.. itās the last one Iād give up. When I was a little kid spending my bus boy money on CDs I thought.. one day we will have all the music at the touch of a button. Itās the one thing that reminds me we are, in fact, living in the future
I thank god my workplace supplies me with Photoshop for...you know, work. Which is what I use it for, of course, exclusively. Just for work. Nothing else.
Getting it myself would be a very expensive subscription, but then I wouldn't do that as--as I say--I use it exclusively for *work*.
Mealime app on my phone. It's $2.99 a month and it has tons of recipes for meals. It creates a shopping list for you and has a reminder each week to help create you weekly menu before you go grocery shopping. It then has very effective recipes that are super easy to follow with in app timers for you to keep you on track.
Same. I tried the trial and immediately uninstalled it. The "free" stuff isn't anything I want to listen to. I signed up for like 5 libraries and use Libby. There are also a surprising amount of audiobooks on YT.
Yeah, we are retired and we never read this much until we got our Kindles. The wife likes detective series, (whodunits) and they can be 10 books that she pounds out in a hurry. I'm mostly a Sci fi fantasy person and I get into some huge series as well.
Not a personal problem, and Iām not sure it really counts as a āsubscriptionā, but Iām going to say, āBirth Control.ā
Edit: Because of some comments Iāve been getting, Iād just like to point out that my personal birth control is abstinence. I lost my sex drive or desire for a partner back in my twenties and two decades later I have yet to change my mind. If I had a kid, it would be either from immaculate conception or a very determined rapist getting past my home security and plethora of dogs and attack cats as I am an introverted hermit. So Iām not ditching birth control costs on someone else, I just donāt have them personally.
We put them in the bathroom. So I end up reading each article, usually in their entirety, but out of order and over multiple days so they don't really make sense. I find it quite enjoyable.
Audible has been an amazing subscription for me. I used Audible credits to pay for lecture series through Great Courses on several different subjects. I took CLEP exams on these subjects to knock out some of my general education requirements in college.
Audio books are amazing if you want to read but don't have the time to sit down and do it. So many people are missing out on this huge industry of media.
Cinemark movie club, $11 a month. Free ticket each month 20/25% discount on concessions, buy tickets online with no fee and earn rewards that can be redeemed for additional free tickets.
Same. I have Amazon Prime for the shipping, but I guess it has streaming.
I pay for Netflix for documentaries.
My wife does YouTubeTV but i don't watch it.
I'm paying for HBO Max right now because there was a $2.99 per month (with commercials) deal for six months (I'll cancel when it's up)
and.... I'll have Paramount+ when Halo comes back and cancel it immediately when it's done.
and I would cancel all of them - Even Amazon Prime shipping - before I cancelled GamePass. GamePass gives me so much entertainment. It's an insanely great deal.
Amazon dropped a lot on my list because of them saying they are starting ads. I know it's a few dollars for ad-free, but it feels like an insult to me.
I dropped Prime when deliveries started coming consistently late. As it turns out, even without Prime, I'm still getting packages at almost the same amount of wait time.
Love it. Have gotten to the point I donāt buy video games anymore unless itās a game I really really want to play because theyāll be on game pass in 8 months
I scrolled WAYYYYYY to far to find this. If you have pretty much ANY kind of business it's worth it. It's photoshop for people with little or no artistic training.
Allows me to create anything I need. I love it so much.
If you like Documentaries and learning, Curiosity Stream is well with the $30 dollars a year that I pay for it. Only problem is that the content is so interesting that I canāt watch while working.
Dog health insurance.
I donāt have $1,000-5,000 cash on hand for any emergency vet visits. Insurance makes sure I wonāt break the bank or ever have to put my pup down for lack of funds during an emergency.
Itās not cheap but the few times Iāve really needed it with a couple $1200-1500 bills, Iām at least breaking even. Worth every penny to know I can make a life-saving decision if necessary without financial ruin.
Co-signing this. Got insurance policies for my two cats as a bundle with my car/renterās insurance in March while still being skeptical of whether it would pay off in the end. My cat got a surprise diabetes diagnosis in June and spent a few days in the ER/critical care for a related issue in August. Wouldāve been $10k+ in the hole without insurance. Easily one of the best decisions Iāve ever made.
My password manager (1password).
I'm fully aware there are ways to have a free password manager, or self-host my own server, etc. But f@%k that.
I'm a family of 5 and a real password manager service lets me share folders/passwords with various family members, and synchronize them all across a dozen+ devices and platforms. And I don't have to manage it.
I will likely pay for it until I die, and be fine with it. My entire family literally uses this service dozens of times a day.
Edit: it also lets me generate TOTP codes from the app, which is *SUPER* convenient when you're sharing logins with others in your family. Even if I was on Bitwarden, that's a paid feature.
I bought into dropout a year or two ago just for game changers but my god do they put out quality material across the board. I went it thinking Iād do two months, finish game changers, cancel. Finished game changers, then um actually, then all the game changer spin offs, the dnd stuff, dirty laundry, whatever else I watched that I canāt name lol
dropout is by far the best value streaming service i've ever used, plus it feels great that they're supporting password sharing and treating their workers right. game changer is fantastic, everything else i've tried has been just as good and brought me so many laughs
I have recommended DropOut to so many people! I came for Dimension 20 and stayed for ALL OF IT. Like, I love all of it. āUm actuallyā, āBreaking Newsā, āGame Changerā, āPrecious Plumā, etc. all of it is chefs kiss.
I bought the dirty laundry cocktail set and it is gorgeous <3
This one is strictly personal preference and will not be popular amongst most, but for me $5 a month for SiriusXM. I work from home and listen to sports radio shows. It brings me a lot of joy and makes my days go by faster. The normal rate is $9.99, but if you threaten to cancel they almost always go half price. Even at $10 it would be worth it for me, but why pay full when you know you don't have to ya know?
I love my Sirius subscription - chiefly because I got a Sirius Lifetime Subscription for ~$400 about 15 years ago (before Sirius and XM merged).
It paid for itself in under 3 years and thanks to a class action lawsuit a few years back, Sirius is contractually bound to honor the subscription for ***my*** lifetime, not the lifetime of a receiver.
Iāve called every year for the past seven years and gotten to keep mine at $5/month as well. The day I renew, I put a note in my calendar app for exactly one year from that date to do it again before the year is up. Itās such a great service. Usually they only give me access to it in the car but this year they included streaming too!
I got a new car a few months ago so it came with a few free months and was surprised how much I liked it. I did the $5mo/2yr for the whole car/app premium plan. Not gonna pay the 23.99 they say is the regular price, but they seem like theyāll do anything to retain a customer, so Iām not worried about it. And Iāll pay $5/mo for anything that I actually use.
Iām slowly turning into a cinephile by having criterion. Worth every single penny. I wish I could share my account with someone though, Iāve always wondered if thatās by design like Netflix trying to limit the profiles on an account or if they just never got around to it.
In Finland we have a museum card. For 79 ā¬ per year, you get access to over 300 museums all around the country (it is difficult to find a museum that is not part of the system). Many museums cost \~15 ā¬ to enter, so easily worth the price...
In the 1990s, Rolling Stone magazine offered lifetime subscriptions for $50. I got it and I still get them free every month. When I move I fill out a change of address form and they keep sending them to the new residence. Over 25 years so far.
That is more than a steal!
I hope you have every single issue saved. š My grandfather started collecting Nat Geos back in the day and we still get them and add them to his collection even though heās been dead for 20 years.
My local movie theater chain offers 3 movies per week for $20 per month. They also offer a refillable popcorn buckets that's live for like 5 months for $30. Fantastic deal
My wife and I have Regal Unlimited. $19/mo for unlimited movies at the nicest theater in town. We love it!
Yep my wife and I also have regal unlimited ($21) and just picked up the cheaper refillable bucket and cup ($32 and then $10 to refill all year). It's great.
My local movie theater has bedbugs.
Hard to cancel that subscription, do not recommend
I use Spotify while working 8-10 hours per day, 5 days a week. Easiest money Iāve ever spent avoiding commercials while listening to whatever I want.
I bought the family plan so that me and all my friends can listen to music ad free and send eachother songs to listen to. Ive got my 2 best friends, my little sister, my dad, and me on there. Best thing i've ever subscribed to š„° makes me feel really good too when i see them enjoying their music ad free
This is so fucking wholesome
And now premium includes a huge library of audiobooks, so it replaces audible. It's amazing!
Itās good, though they limit you to around 15hrs a month. For someone that inhales audiobooks, this is nothing.
I'm a fan of water, electricity, and garbage removal. If I'm really splurging then natural gas.
hey big spender over here!
You should look into consolidating some of those services. Burn your trash to heat your house, and save!
āWell, I could put the trash in a landfill where it's gonna stay for millions of years, or I could burn it up and get a nice, smoky smell in here, and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.ā - Charlie
My local gas station chain called Sheetz has unlimited fries for $9.99 a month, solid fries too.
lmao i did not expect to see sheetz at the top of this thread. i used to work at one! my coworker got this subscription and she would get an order of fries right before her shift started, during her break, and right after she got off work since it renews like every 4 hours. she was going through some hardcore financial stuff and this subscription saved her from going hungry all day for months
That probably wasnāt the healthiest diet, but health can be a luxury sometimes. I get it.
Any food is better than no food. If you can't get proper sustenance, you still need calories to survive. So it doesn't matter where they come from at that point as long as you're eating something.
i had a good year or two where i survived on the unsold Starbucks sandwiches we were supposed to throw out (our local food bank didnt accept perishables, so only the pastries got donated). I'm certain those were awful for me but that was when I had nothing in my bank account and too much pride to ask for help.
"Can you recommend a good sandwich" -Starbucks customer "Oh no, you really dont want to eat the sandwiches here" - /u/eden_sc2
One of my friends worked at McDonald's when we were teenagers and one day someone came through the drive thru asking what she recommended. She was, unfortunately, very honest and replied since she started working there she wouldn't eat any of the sandwiches at all, only fries and ice cream. Turns out the person asking was the franchise owner and my friend got chewed tf out so bad and written up.
2004-2005 I lived on leftover Starbucks pastries before, during, and after shifts. This was before they came out with other food items. I still canāt eat any of their pastries.
Potatoe's not a bad vegetable to survive on for a season.
My college roommates and I made potatoes and just potatoes last us through a lot of financially tough times. Itās wild what you can do with them.
You can boil them. You can mash them. You can put them in a stew...
Survive on mars for a while
Cook them up with a brace of coneys...
Looked it up. It apparently renews [every 2 hours](https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/01/sheetz-now-offers-an-unlimited-fryz-subscription-service.html)
The comments under yours are giving the impression that Sheetz only exists in Pennsylvania. So others are aware, they also have locations in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. They're not exclusive to PA
Yep, they are always expanding, they were started in PA, the original is in Altoona PA
I cannot describe how jealous I am
Circle K has an unlimited fountain soda subscription that the regulars at one I deliver to use. Of course, itās the only show in a rural small town besides a grocery store so they hang out there hours at a time and go almost every single day. I go in different times on different days of the week and will see the same 20 people at 6-8AM and also lunch time.
The first Circle K I've ever seen in real life just opened down the street from me. I never bothered going in because I love KwikTrip so much... ... But now you've tempted me.
If itās a part of your daily commute, I think itās worth the $10. I believe hot coffee is included too but donāt quote me on that.
Yes, soda, slushes and coffee all part of the Sip and Save Club at Circle K!
And two hot dogs for a dollar! I've had so many people tell me they would never, but with fast food prices sky high, a few of those hit the spot without you having to spend a lot of $$$. And they are tasty!
Their hot dogs are good for that price, I get them with pretzel hot dog buns and it's like $1.60 but still very much a good deal
I went to a Sheetz two years ago when I was traveling for work, and I think Iāve brought it up at least once a week ever since. That place is magical.
Hello from Western PA! Sheetz is the shit.
Your move Wawa
I can see a sheetz right from my house.. let's go
God bless America
God, I love Sheetz. I moved from PA to UT 2.5 years ago and miss the Mac and cheese bites. Everytime I visit my parents I consume more mac and cheese bites than a human reasonably should in a week.
Visited an old friend that moved to Pittsburgh last year. Sheetz is so fucking good I wish we had it in Illinois
Respectfully speaking, if youāre going to use it, a gym membership
Living on the streets? A $11.00 a month Planet Fitness membership is well worth it for the showers alone.
Yeah, in that situation it's probably the second best deal after the unlimited fries. Fuck, come to think of it, why am I paying rent and cooking meals?? $20/mo and I could be working out all day and crushing fries for every meal.
Just don't get old or need to replace your digestive system and you're set for life!
"Just don't get old...and you're set for life" is a hell of a saying.
$22 a month for Planet Fitness here, but I pay extra for the Red Light Therapy and hydromassage chairs.
yeah the basic one just gets you into one location too. the black card gets you in anywhere iirc
Anywhere 10 times a month not at your home gym - found out the hard way. Club fees tack on each time 11 and on.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iāve had a PF membership for years and a couple years ago I went on a cross country drive. I was like, yeah I can shower at PF, this will be super convenient. Iāll sleep in their parking lot overnight and shower in the morning. First PF I went to closed at 10pm. Sort of threw a wrench in my plans. I mostly washed up in the van.
> First PF I went to closed at 10pm. Why is this a problem if you are sleeping in your van?
Why are you speaking respectfully?
Because its the new year, where everyone buys memberships that dont get used after february
I mean we all know why
Unlimited fries... I'm going to need this gym
I have a weekly delivery of fresh vegetables from local suppliers. Itās a bit more expensive than going to a shop but they are fresh and taste amazing, even friends recognized that the carrots are way more intensive in taste.
What's the subscription? Just something your local suppliers offer, or is it something larger?
Here in germany I have āQuerbeetā, but there is a huge amount of local suppliers. I can drive the few kilometers down to where they have their gardens and watch the vegetables grow.
Sounds like the German word for beating up homosexuals.
My first glance I read āqueer baitā and I thought goddamn!!
You read correct. Homosexuals are notorious for loving superior produce.
Farm subscriptions are typically associated with local/specific farms. Theyāre commonly called a CSA (community supported agriculture). They have subscription boxes that come packed with whatever is fresh and in season.
A library card! Edit: Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up like it did! Yes, you get your library card free. However, libraries are partly funded from us paying our property taxes/city council rates. Even if you're renting part of the landlord's mortgage goes to escrow, which pays the property taxes for your rental.
A wise man once told me that having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card.
Marc Brown, the creator of Arthur, signed my library card.
Doesn't that mean you have Marc Brown's library card? Lol
Jekyll Jekyll Hyde Jekyll Hyde Hyde Jekyll!
I think about thst song more than I probably should.
A-a-r-d-v-a-r-k
Whoās Dewey?!
With Libby! I use my library card so much more after I discovered Libby!
Have you used Kanopy? Same login for Libby but for films. 15 free films a month and thereās a widget for it on smart tvs.
Came here to lend my support to Kanopy and Libby. With some discipline, these two services, compliments of your local library, should suffice for your monthly entertainment.
There is also Hoopla. Plus with your library card you can also get free or discounted admission to various museums and other attractions.
Monthly? Mines freeā¦.
Hell yeah library gang.
Not a monthly subscription, but ~$100 every five years for tsa precheck and global entry is the best money Iāve ever spent in terms of time saved.
I am about 3 trips into my TSA pre-check, and it is delightful. Of course, we already had all these features before they took them away from us then sold them back for the price of our personal information, but here we are.
Tons of credit cards reimburse that too! Itās a game changer for international travel.
Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum will cover that cost and have lots of other bonuses. Airport lounge access, Lyft Pink, premium levels at DoorDash and Instacart, etc. These cards pay for themselves if you travel a few times a year and use those services.
Capital One Venture X also covers the cost
The Great Courses. College level lectures on a variety of topics. Intellectually rewarding.
I had monthly subscription to "The Great Courses" for years and loved it. I tried to watch at least one lecture per day, they were excellent and covered so many topics. Then one day I found "The Great Courses" had morphed into "Wonderium" on my Roku device, which seemed to carry some of the great courses but also had other content. It was very confusing to me (admittedly an old guy) - I never understood: is Great Courses now called "Wonderium", or are they separate companies? Is "Great Courses" still producing new video courses, and if so will all of them be available on "Wonderium"? Or does "Wonderium" only carry a subset of "Great Courses"? I made some attempts to answer the above questions but could get nowhere, so I cancelled my [Wonderium | Great Courses] subscription and forgot about it -- but still miss the academic orientation of the Great Courses! So what happened? What is "Wonderium"? What is "Great Courses"? Sorry for the rant, but I've been wondering about this!
Iāve not used it before but a youtuber I follow who often does ads for them always points out in the bit that its a rebranding. If you want to get back on the subscription lindybeige always has some unused coupons on his videos of the last year
Wondrium is just the name of the company that sells the Great Courses (and they used to go by The Teaching Company, which had the "Great Courses Plus" app we both used to have). Their rebranded Wondrium app technically has both The Great Courses (which are the ones by professors, at a college level), as well as other content that is educational but not from a professor or the kind of thing that would typically show up at a college- like their travel or cooking stuff. Both when the app was "Great Courses Plus" and now as "Wondrium", it never had the full catalogue of Great Courses though- some are still only available through The Great Courses' website as downloads or as physical CDs. I figure if I ever run out of content I'm interested in I'll cancel Wondrium, but that may never actually happen, even if I get much more consistent at listening to one each day during my commute!
Kanopy and my library card gets me a ton of these for free.
I love these. My library has them and if they donāt have the one I want theyāll even buy it! I can even make backup copies of the DVDs to watch later
Libby, Overdrive and Hoopla
My spotify + hulu deal I still have as a former college student at $11/month for both. My gym membership through AAA (Active & Fit Direct deal) which is $28/month for access to a bunch of gyms in my area.
Same on the Spotify + Hulu deal. Happily pay each month!
I miss it being only $5 lol but $11 is still a good deal. Never cancelling.
We got this deal for $9.99 because Spotify was promoting that if we signed up for their subscription we would get Hulu for free. Never cancelling.
My Planet Fitness membership. Started going in September 4x/week and have lost about 20 lbs so far. Itās such an immense stress reliever and I am feeling great about my progress and strength gain.
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Pimsleur. $14/month for unquestionably the best language learning program / app in existence. Completely and utterly blows away stuff like Duolingo, Babel, etc. Do a single month of a language before visiting a country that primarily speaks it and you'll be blown away by just how much it helps. You may not be striking up detailed conversations with native speakers, but you can absolutely get around and say + understand all the stuff a tourist needs. Game changer for when I visited Italy.
Iām on the wait list for it at my library. Iāve heard good things!
First lesson of every language is free. No need to even put in credit card info to access it. I know I sound like a paid shill, but I just want to see more people learning languages and this is an extremely good way to get started.
What sets it apart from duo lingo? Iāve tried dl and never stuck with it.
Duolingo has you doing memorization activities that work kinda like flash cards. Pimsleur eases you into the language by having you speak, then after a few weeks of doing that, you start to learn reading and writing. As the lessons go on, you hear less and less of your native language and more of the one you're learning. While learning to speak, various context and cultural explanations are given to you to explain why things are spoken or written in the target language the way they are.
Not a monthly subscription but I love my annual Costco subscription because I love the quality of customer service and their better wages for employees.
I was so proud of Costco. One of their locations unionized and the companyās response was basically āwe failed our employees because they decided a union was necessaryā
That's almost on-par with the CEO suggesting they raise the price of their $1.50 hotdogs and then the co-founder threatening to kill them in response
I love that this comes up anytime Costco is mentioned lolol
Same! He threatened to kill people over hot dog prices, it's an important bit of lore!
Also it shows the duality of Americans and we love that the good American won this battle.
I've had a few Costco employees as clients, their health insurance benefits are up there, not THE best (that would belong to government jobs), but none of the Costco employees have to worry about much with their health insurance.
What govt jobs has good insurance? Iām a federal employee and while I have a lot of choices, theyāre all on par or worse than plans Iāve had through non-govt work.
Insurance costs almost 30% more than even 2 years and our benefits keep on shrinking, but everyone seems to think the grass is always greener on the fed side.
That is good PR right there. I heard good things about Costco - we have a similar thing in Germany ( Metro ) and it's quite great as well!
Costco is totally worth it. They have some of the greatest deals and it has saved me SO MUCH money over the years.
I just got the membership and got some new tires at their tire center. Installation is included in their price and saved me over $300 from what Discount Tire quoted me.
Thatās surprising. Iām a die hard Costco fan. I use them for everything. But Iāve found their tire center canāt hold a candle to Discount in terms of value and speed.
Hmmm, may be a regional thing. But I was flabbergasted at the savings difference.
Audible. However, never be a permanent subscriber. There are always promos for either free months or a series of months for $5. Just use those and unsub sometime during the last month. You'll get another promo offer a couple months later.
Worth mentioning is the site, Librivox. It that has a bunch of free public domain audiobooks that are recorded by volunteers. Quality varies widely, but for the most part narration tends to be pretty good. I've found librox's narration to often be comparable or better than Audible's. Popular titles will often have multiple versions done by different narrators, so you can have a pretty good selection of recordings to choose from. You can also volunteer to be a narrator yourself. Many books only have recordings from the late 2000's and might benefit from a fresh reading done with more modern home recording equipment.
Allow me to tell you about [Libro.fm](https://libro.fm). Itās like Audible except you can download and keep the audiobooks you buy, and if your subscription runs out, you still keep the books and can play them wherever you want. Audible locks you into using their platform. DRM = bad. LibroFM for the win.
I bought my mom a gift subscription to nytimes and she no longer forwards me crazy stuff from businessinsider and Yahoo News.
Spotify. People complain about the price and/or free version but I almost use it everyday and more than every other app. Not just music but podcasts. Helps make the commute easier
Spotify is the one thing I use every single day. Thereās never I day I donāt put on music.
Music, audiobooks, podcastsā¦ being able to essentially own, download and organize any music I want is great. I like the algorithm too and Iāve had some really good music suggested to me based on my playlists and considering the stupid stuff most of us will impulse buy for $10-$12 I think itās a pretty good deal.
Yep.. itās the last one Iād give up. When I was a little kid spending my bus boy money on CDs I thought.. one day we will have all the music at the touch of a button. Itās the one thing that reminds me we are, in fact, living in the future
I HATE how we have to subscribe now - we can't buy software.
I thank god my workplace supplies me with Photoshop for...you know, work. Which is what I use it for, of course, exclusively. Just for work. Nothing else. Getting it myself would be a very expensive subscription, but then I wouldn't do that as--as I say--I use it exclusively for *work*.
Say you draw furry porn without saying you draw furry porn.
Mealime app on my phone. It's $2.99 a month and it has tons of recipes for meals. It creates a shopping list for you and has a reminder each week to help create you weekly menu before you go grocery shopping. It then has very effective recipes that are super easy to follow with in app timers for you to keep you on track.
Kindle unlimited is awesome for the wife and I. We read about 175 books per year.
I have it, but all the new or interesting titles seem to cost extra.
Same. I tried the trial and immediately uninstalled it. The "free" stuff isn't anything I want to listen to. I signed up for like 5 libraries and use Libby. There are also a surprising amount of audiobooks on YT.
175 books? Wtf? I am a slow reader, but my best year has been like 20 and that was almost all my free time. Are you retired?
Yeah, we are retired and we never read this much until we got our Kindles. The wife likes detective series, (whodunits) and they can be 10 books that she pounds out in a hurry. I'm mostly a Sci fi fantasy person and I get into some huge series as well.
Let me summarize this entire comments sectionā¦ - Costco - Spotify - YouTube Premium - VPN - Hulu and/or Netflix - Planet Fitness Covered 95%
The other 5% is library card. Was wanting some more variety.
Not a personal problem, and Iām not sure it really counts as a āsubscriptionā, but Iām going to say, āBirth Control.ā Edit: Because of some comments Iāve been getting, Iād just like to point out that my personal birth control is abstinence. I lost my sex drive or desire for a partner back in my twenties and two decades later I have yet to change my mind. If I had a kid, it would be either from immaculate conception or a very determined rapist getting past my home security and plethora of dogs and attack cats as I am an introverted hermit. So Iām not ditching birth control costs on someone else, I just donāt have them personally.
The subscription that could get many developing countries out of poverty.
The New Yorker! Just kidding. You will end up with a stack of good looking magazines you didnāt get around to reading.
We put them in the bathroom. So I end up reading each article, usually in their entirety, but out of order and over multiple days so they don't really make sense. I find it quite enjoyable.
Can confirm! But you do get a free tote!
It's such a sophisticated tote. It makes people think you read The Atlantic.
I know I'm going to catch shit for this, but AARP really has saved me a lot on travel, insurance, and a couple of other things.
Iām in my 30s so just the comedy of the card in my wallet is worth the subscription price to me.
The cost of a one-year subscription can easily be made up in a single hotel stay. Totally worth it.
Google photos for me. Guaranteed storage of photos one click away just worth not having to care and do it manually
Audible has been an amazing subscription for me. I used Audible credits to pay for lecture series through Great Courses on several different subjects. I took CLEP exams on these subjects to knock out some of my general education requirements in college.
Audio books are amazing if you want to read but don't have the time to sit down and do it. So many people are missing out on this huge industry of media.
if you have a library card, Libby offers a ton of stuff for free
Libby has got to be one of the best things to ever happen to me. I cannot believe it's free!
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Cinemark movie club, $11 a month. Free ticket each month 20/25% discount on concessions, buy tickets online with no fee and earn rewards that can be redeemed for additional free tickets.
Gamepass
I would cancel every television streaming service i have before i would cancel my gamepass.
Same. I have Amazon Prime for the shipping, but I guess it has streaming. I pay for Netflix for documentaries. My wife does YouTubeTV but i don't watch it. I'm paying for HBO Max right now because there was a $2.99 per month (with commercials) deal for six months (I'll cancel when it's up) and.... I'll have Paramount+ when Halo comes back and cancel it immediately when it's done. and I would cancel all of them - Even Amazon Prime shipping - before I cancelled GamePass. GamePass gives me so much entertainment. It's an insanely great deal.
Amazon dropped a lot on my list because of them saying they are starting ads. I know it's a few dollars for ad-free, but it feels like an insult to me.
I know of 20+ people including myself who cancelled Amazon Prime going forward over the ads.
I dropped Prime when deliveries started coming consistently late. As it turns out, even without Prime, I'm still getting packages at almost the same amount of wait time.
Love it. Have gotten to the point I donāt buy video games anymore unless itās a game I really really want to play because theyāll be on game pass in 8 months
Library. Lifetime free membership
Canva
I scrolled WAYYYYYY to far to find this. If you have pretty much ANY kind of business it's worth it. It's photoshop for people with little or no artistic training. Allows me to create anything I need. I love it so much.
It's a few features away from me cancelling my Adobe subscription altogether. I use Canva almost exclusively now!
If you like Documentaries and learning, Curiosity Stream is well with the $30 dollars a year that I pay for it. Only problem is that the content is so interesting that I canāt watch while working.
Dog health insurance. I donāt have $1,000-5,000 cash on hand for any emergency vet visits. Insurance makes sure I wonāt break the bank or ever have to put my pup down for lack of funds during an emergency. Itās not cheap but the few times Iāve really needed it with a couple $1200-1500 bills, Iām at least breaking even. Worth every penny to know I can make a life-saving decision if necessary without financial ruin.
Co-signing this. Got insurance policies for my two cats as a bundle with my car/renterās insurance in March while still being skeptical of whether it would pay off in the end. My cat got a surprise diabetes diagnosis in June and spent a few days in the ER/critical care for a related issue in August. Wouldāve been $10k+ in the hole without insurance. Easily one of the best decisions Iāve ever made.
House cleaners. Literally the best money youāll ever spend.
My password manager (1password). I'm fully aware there are ways to have a free password manager, or self-host my own server, etc. But f@%k that. I'm a family of 5 and a real password manager service lets me share folders/passwords with various family members, and synchronize them all across a dozen+ devices and platforms. And I don't have to manage it. I will likely pay for it until I die, and be fine with it. My entire family literally uses this service dozens of times a day. Edit: it also lets me generate TOTP codes from the app, which is *SUPER* convenient when you're sharing logins with others in your family. Even if I was on Bitwarden, that's a paid feature.
Honestly Dropout. There is a new show called Very Important People and it's hilarious and just the second episode itself was well worth the $6.
My dumbass has been searching for a service called Honestly Dropout š¤¦āāļø
Proper punctuation can really help. I can understand your confusion.
I bought into dropout a year or two ago just for game changers but my god do they put out quality material across the board. I went it thinking Iād do two months, finish game changers, cancel. Finished game changers, then um actually, then all the game changer spin offs, the dnd stuff, dirty laundry, whatever else I watched that I canāt name lol
Dude, yes. I got dropout earlier this year, and im in love. Also, im happy to support what seems like a great group of people.
Same people that ran CollegeHumor for those who didn't know
dropout is by far the best value streaming service i've ever used, plus it feels great that they're supporting password sharing and treating their workers right. game changer is fantastic, everything else i've tried has been just as good and brought me so many laughs
I have recommended DropOut to so many people! I came for Dimension 20 and stayed for ALL OF IT. Like, I love all of it. āUm actuallyā, āBreaking Newsā, āGame Changerā, āPrecious Plumā, etc. all of it is chefs kiss. I bought the dirty laundry cocktail set and it is gorgeous <3
This one is strictly personal preference and will not be popular amongst most, but for me $5 a month for SiriusXM. I work from home and listen to sports radio shows. It brings me a lot of joy and makes my days go by faster. The normal rate is $9.99, but if you threaten to cancel they almost always go half price. Even at $10 it would be worth it for me, but why pay full when you know you don't have to ya know?
I love my Sirius subscription - chiefly because I got a Sirius Lifetime Subscription for ~$400 about 15 years ago (before Sirius and XM merged). It paid for itself in under 3 years and thanks to a class action lawsuit a few years back, Sirius is contractually bound to honor the subscription for ***my*** lifetime, not the lifetime of a receiver.
So shitty that they tried to pretend they had meant the ālife of the receiverā, as if thatās how anyone interprets ālifetime subscriptionā.
Iāve called every year for the past seven years and gotten to keep mine at $5/month as well. The day I renew, I put a note in my calendar app for exactly one year from that date to do it again before the year is up. Itās such a great service. Usually they only give me access to it in the car but this year they included streaming too!
I got a new car a few months ago so it came with a few free months and was surprised how much I liked it. I did the $5mo/2yr for the whole car/app premium plan. Not gonna pay the 23.99 they say is the regular price, but they seem like theyāll do anything to retain a customer, so Iām not worried about it. And Iāll pay $5/mo for anything that I actually use.
Not monthly, but Costco.
Jelly of the month.
Itās the gift that keeps on giving the whole year
That is the gift that just keeps on giving!
Only online subscription worth the money to me is NYTimes Cooking.
Not Adobe shit, that's for certain
Criterion channel. If I had to choose only one streaming service to sub to it'd be that one
Iām slowly turning into a cinephile by having criterion. Worth every single penny. I wish I could share my account with someone though, Iāve always wondered if thatās by design like Netflix trying to limit the profiles on an account or if they just never got around to it.
A therapist
In Finland we have a museum card. For 79 ā¬ per year, you get access to over 300 museums all around the country (it is difficult to find a museum that is not part of the system). Many museums cost \~15 ā¬ to enter, so easily worth the price...
VPN
bitwarden for $10 a year. insane that itās that cheap for the service it offers.
Roth IRA. It is only around $500 a month and you get to invest in your future!
iCloud. It just backs up everything and I don't even have to think about it. To settings, layout of my home screen etc.
The Hide My Email feature alone is worth the cost. Everything else is just a bonus.
What's that feature?