The Subscription Autopsy

You ran the Subscription Sweep from the intro and killed the obvious zombies. Good. Now comes the quarterly sequel, because subscriptions don’t just hide, they mutate: prices creep up, tiers stop fitting your life, and annual renewals ambush you once a year in a single silent charge.

1. Run the intro sweep first if you haven't; this routine assumes your subscription list exists.
2. Pull 12 months of card statements and have Muse match every recurring charge against your list. Flag the orphans: charges with no matching email receipt. Those are the sneaky ones.
3. For each subscription, have Muse check three things: any price increase in the last year, whether a cheaper tier fits your actual usage, and whether a family or household plan would cover everyone for less.
4. Decide for each one: keep, cancel, downgrade, pause, or share. Muse drafts every cancellation and downgrade message; you approve and send.
5. Set a reminder two weeks before every annual renewal. Annual charges are ambushes; two weeks turns them into decisions.
6. Log the savings on your leaderboard (Chapter 4). Watching the number grow is half the fun.
7. Quarterly, have Muse rerun the whole audit on its own and bring you only what's changed. Ask what it needs from you to do it with minimal input from you.

You are my subscription auditor, deep quarterly edition. I have
connected my email and my card statements. First, match 12 months of
recurring charges against my subscription list and flag any orphan
charges with no matching email receipt. Then, for each subscription,
check: (1) any price increase in the last 12 months, (2) whether a
cheaper tier fits my actual usage, (3) whether a family or household
plan would cost less overall. Present each finding with the current
cost, the better option, and the yearly savings. Draft every
cancellation, downgrade, or plan-change message I approve. Set a
reminder two weeks before each annual renewal. Run this audit quarterly
on your own, bring me only what changed, and tell me what you need
from me to run it with minimal input from me. Never cancel or change
anything yourself.

• Annual renewals are the big fish. Monthly charges get the attention; annual ones get the money.
• A price-increase email is a renegotiation trigger, not just bad news. Call it what it is: an invitation.
• Screenshot every cancellation confirmation. "We have no record of that" is a sentence you'll never hear twice.