{"id":74526,"date":"2025-08-17T07:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T07:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/74526\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T07:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T07:23:08","slug":"australians-are-wasting-hundreds-of-dollars-a-year-on-subscriptions-they-never-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/74526\/","title":{"rendered":"Australians are wasting hundreds of dollars a year on subscriptions they never use"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Australians continue to battle the cost-of-living pressures caused by years of high inflation and interest rates, plenty are wasting hundreds of dollars a year on subscription services they never use, with many even having forgotten about signing up in the first place.<\/p>\n

Research released by Westpac this week revealed three in every 10 Aussies lose $600 a year on duplicate apps and services they don’t use.<\/p>\n

It also found the average consumer spends an extra 20 per cent on subscriptions than what they realise \u2013 the equivalent of about $14 a month or $168 a year.<\/p>\n

\"PittThree in every 10 Australians waste $600 a year on apps they don’t use. (Nine \/ Janie Barrett)<\/p>\n

“Convenience is clearly appealing to Australians and they’re willing to pay for it. But our research has found these services might be running away from them a little bit,” Westpac acting chief executive, consumer, Carolyn McCann said.<\/p>\n

“When we compared total estimated spend against customer transaction data, we could see customers are spending about $14 more each month than they think they are on subscriptions.<\/p>\n

“While subscription costs might not seem like much in isolation, they can quickly add up \u2013 especially if these are apps or services you no longer use.<\/p>\n

“This is hundreds or even thousands in potential savings that could be redirected elsewhere.”<\/p>\n

\"WestpacWestpac also found its customers are spending more than $2200 a year on takeaway food. (Dominic Lorrimer)<\/p>\n

The research found that failing to cancel a service during a trial was the main reason people were spending more than they thought, while just under a third of consumers said they’d paid for a subscription they’d forgotten about.<\/p>\n

A similar proportion (31 per cent) said they found it too difficult to cancel certain services.<\/p>\n

\ufeffWestpac also found Australians are spending $141 extra a year on subscriptions, an increase of 11.3 per cent from 2024.<\/p>\n

That comes as a number of popular streaming providers, including Spotify and Netflix<\/a>, have increased their prices in consecutive years.\ufeff<\/p>\n

Gaming services are the biggest money sinks for Australians, costing the average consumer $55.50 a month ($666 a year), followed by video streamers ($21.63 per month\/$260 a year) and music ($16.98 a month\/$204 a year).<\/p>\n

At the same time, \ufeffWestpac also found its customers are spending a whopping $2200 a year on takeaway food.<\/p>\n

“Our data suggests customers are willing to spend on what makes life easier, with a significant uplift in spend on food services,” McCann said.<\/p>\n

“But there’s also growing awareness around value.<\/p>\n

“While spend on home and utility subscriptions recorded the second-highest spend growth, customers also said these services delivered the least value.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Australians continue to battle the cost-of-living pressures caused by years of high inflation and interest rates, plenty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-74526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}