God, I hate subscription services. If I could live without them, I would be a happy man. Instead, I’m slowly bleeding pennies here on my laptop.

I have a Netflix account, an Amazon Prime account, a Prime Music account, four yearly reoccurring domain name fees, and a reoccurring fee for iCloud space. And, I use all of them. No matter how many times they raise the costs, I continue to keep using them.

Why? I because it’s the only way I can get what I need from the devices that I use.

When am I going to be forced to pay for my podcast that I listen to? Or, the social media sites that I frequent?

We already feel the “brunt” of it in the media — YouTube Red, CBS All Access, ABC Go, Hulu, Showtime, HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc. Unless we watch the shows we want right when they are on, or  digitally recorded, we have to pay a monthly or yearly fee to get it. Books and audiobooks are slowly becoming harder to come by free (I have checked out books where pages have been torn out, or audio books that are on CDs that have been listened to so much that they are scratched to the point where they have become inaudible).

When I was looking for a blogging site this morning, where I ended up settling on this one and deleting the past posts so that the embarrassment of how long it had been that I had posted last had been deleted from the internet, I was researching and found that not only the sites that post that they are free, aren’t really “free”. You have limited access, just like everything else out there, and if you want more power and more capability, you have to pay the “piper”. Why don’t you just say that upfront? Stop getting my hopes up!!!

My daughter had a friend over to spend the night. They were listening to music this morning, and as much as I LOVE listening to Ariana Grande, I was in the mood for Pink Floyd, which I hadn’t listened to forever. When I loaded the app on my phone and found the exact album I wanted to listen to, I got a warning message that stated that someone else was currently using the plan and that if I chose to listen to that music, I would cancel their listening session and would start mine. BUT, if I upgraded my plan, then both of us could listen to what we wanted. The catch? It’s twice as much as what I’m currently paying.

This isn’t a “poor me” post. I’m just frustrated that everything has an additional fee for what seems like everything else that you need but can’t have!

Whoever started this trend of subscription services needs to be forced to pay a subscription for every little thing he/she wants/has to do/watch/wear/eat/etc.

I’d probably have to pay extra to see that.