Senior News Line: Are you paying for subscriptions you don’t use?

Remember when you signed up on a trial basis for a subscription, app or streaming service, then decided you didn’t like it and never used it? Are you still paying for that?

They say that many of us have nearly $20 per month in unused products, coming to hundreds per year, that we’ve forgotten about — but we’re still paying for.

With spring cleaning coming up in a few months, it’s a good time to also clean up our expenses. The way to get started on identifying services you aren’t using is with your monthly checking and credit card statements.

Ideally you’re also saving at least a year of both, because some subscriptions and services only bill annually and won’t show up on your monthly statements.

Go through those statements and be sure you can identify each and every item. The annual ones might be hard to spot, but it’s worth finding them as most are on automatic renewal.

With some items such as a weekly newsletter, it might be going to a temporary email address you created and then forgot about.

Next to the deduction or expense on your credit card or bank statement should be a company name and phone number. Call them.

Ask for the service or subscription to stop immediately and ask for a partial refund. You might get some money back.

Another clue is to go back through your junk email. It’s possible your subscription was waylaid and you never saw it.

For the future, it’s not that you should never again sign up on a trial for a service or product, but that you need to beware of when it will expire and you’ll start being charged.

Make a note on your calendar to decide whether you want to keep going — and be charged — or contact them in advance to have it stopped.

Remember, it’s your money.