How Subscription Based Services And Postpaid Services Are Eating Into My Finances

image: airtel.in

We are barely past half of the month and my Airtel bill is already N10,049.88. And it's just one of my main phone lines. So I have spent another significant sum on the other (MTN) line. No wonder Airtel has been sending me premium customer offerings and gave me an account manager I can directly reach for any issues with my line.

Last month, my Naira Mastercard expired. I was stunned by the number of renewal payment unsuccessful emails from the subscription services I have: from Skype to Buffer to Google Apps to Join.me and others. Some were from services I don't use, and they just keep billing me monthly. When I did a rough calculation, I was paying about $150 to $200 per month for such services. They have been eating into my finances.

Yesterday, I had to clear a $203 bill from Google for February adverts. GTBank did the conversion at N300 to 1 dollar as they billed me over N60,000. And that is not factoring the other adverts I ran on Nairaland (N20,000), Linda Ikeji's blog (N50,000) and Facebook. I knew I was paying considerable amount for adverts but it didn't occur to me that I was paying as high as N150,000 in just one month. Though they are business expenses, I know they can be better optimized. I can get same value for less.

I have begun making necessary changes. I have discontinued subscription services that I don't compulsorily need, especially the ones I use once in 4 months and get billed monthly for. I have also edited my Google ads daily spend from $12 to $5. The only expense I am powerless against is the phone call expenses. I have been watching it grow from N3,000 a month to N7,000 to N10,000 and N15,000 a month. Now it is on course to N30,000 a month. But I noticed they are mostly business calls, following up with clients and marketing. Now I just have to factor that cost in my overhead as I have been considering it not big enough to worry about.

Whenever I download my account statement, I am amazed by how much entered and what is left. I know it's a business reality and I still have a very healthy profit margin, but I want to now optimize more and spend less on overhead.