Find the subscriptions your family would keep paying for

Start with the money that leaves your account

The quickest way to find subscriptions is to follow the money. Open your bank account and your card statements and go back several months. Recurring charges usually show up at the same time each month, often for the same amount, and the name on the statement is often not the name you know the service by.

Look for small amounts as well as large ones. A streaming service, a storage plan, a fitness app, a news site, a software tool, a domain name, a cloud backup: these are easy to forget because each one is modest on its own.

If you pay by card, check each card you use, including the one in your wallet you rarely think about. If you pay by bank transfer, check for standing orders and direct debits too.

Check the places that hold your payment details

Your bank statements catch most of it, but not all. Some services bill through an app store, so the charge appears under the store's name rather than the service's. Others bill through a payment processor, which shows up as a company you may not recognize.

• App store subscriptions on your phone or tablet
• Subscriptions billed through a payment processor
• Annual renewals that only charge once a year
• Services tied to an email address you no longer check
• Free trials that turned into paid plans

Search your email for words like receipt, renewal, subscription, invoice and your card's last four digits. Old confirmation emails are a good record of what you signed up for and when.

Write down how each one is cancelled

A list of names is a start, but it does not tell your family what to do. For each subscription, write the service name, what it is for, how it is paid, and the exact steps to cancel it. If you cancel online, note where in the account the cancel option sits. If you cancel by phone or email, note that. If it can only be cancelled in writing, say so.

Note the login details, or say where they live. If the password is in your password manager, write the name of the entry rather than the password itself. Your family will need access to the account to cancel it, and they will also need to know how to get in. Our guide on why not to share passwords explains a safer way to leave that information.

Add the renewal date if you know it. A subscription that renews in three weeks is more urgent than one that renews next year, and the date tells your family where to start.

Separate the keepers from the cancellations

Not everything should be cancelled. Some subscriptions are worth keeping for a while: a storage plan holding family photos, a domain name with an email address people still use, a service the household relies on. Mark those clearly and say who should keep paying them and for how long.

For the rest, say plainly that they can go. That small permission saves a family member from wondering whether they are allowed to cancel something you set up years ago.

Include the accounts that renew on their own

Some charges are not subscriptions in the usual sense but still renew without anyone noticing. Memberships, insurance policies paid monthly, storage units, website hosting, professional associations, and annual licenses all fit here. List them in the same place, with the same note on how to stop them.

If a service is tied to a Google account, our guide on a Google account after death covers what families usually need to do.

Keep the list where it will be found

A list in your head is no help. Put it in the Bills and subscriptions section of your envelope, and keep a copy with your other papers so the two match. Update it when you add or cancel something. A short review once or twice a year is enough, and it is easiest to do it when a statement arrives.

If you use a password manager, check that the subscriptions you listed match the entries inside it. A service you cancelled but never removed from the manager is a small confusion your family does not need.

What your family will do with this

In the first weeks, your family will be dealing with the urgent things. A clear list of small charges, with the cancellation steps beside each one, means they can work through it in an evening rather than discovering a new charge every month.

The same list helps if you are suddenly unable to manage your own affairs for a while. Someone can step in, keep the services that matter running, and stop the ones that do not. That is the point of writing it down while everything is ordinary.