6 Bills I Canceled This Year That Were A Waste Of Money

It can be hard to know what to cut from a retirement budget. Should a person say goodbye to cable or cut out a gym membership? Or both? Or neither?

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Jennifer S., a lifelong special education teacher who recently retired, spent her first year of retirement taking a hard look at her monthly expenses. Here’s what she cut — and why she wishes she’d done it sooner. Get out your pen and paper, because class is in session.

Also, see how cutting out these nine expenses could save retirees over $29,000 a year.

“I was paying nearly $200 a month for channels I never watched,” Jennifer said. “My kids kept telling me to try streaming, but I was stubborn.”

A premium cable package can indeed be a big expense. According to CNET, the average monthly cost of a premium cable TV and internet package is $217.

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“When I looked at my actual data usage, I was using maybe 2GB a month but paying for unlimited,” she explained. “Turns out I’m on Wi-Fi 90% of the time. Switching to a smaller plan was a no-brainer. Done and done!”

Jennifer said that this one was tough to admit.

“I kept telling myself I’d use that fancy gym with the pool and yoga studio. But you know what? I’m just as happy walking with my neighbors every morning and doing YouTube yoga in my living room. That’s $900 a year back in my pocket,” she said.

“I had Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV+,” she explained. “When I actually tracked what I watched, I realized I was really only using two of them regularly. The others were just auto-renewing and being ignored.”

This isn’t uncommon, either. According to a 2024 LendingTree survey, of those surveyed who pay for streaming, 25% have a subscription to a service they don’t use.

“My kids thought it was hilarious that I still had a landline,” Jennifer said. “I kept it ‘for emergencies’ but realized my cellphone works just fine for that. The only calls I got on the landline were spam anyway.”

This was a big one. “I’d been paying for a storage unit for five years after downsizing,” she explained. “When I finally went through everything, I realized I was paying $1,500 a year to store things I didn’t even remember I had. I spent a weekend sorting through it all, gave most of it to my kids or charity, and it felt like a weight lifted.”