In 2024, I made a concerted effort to cut every paid subscription I could. I moved what I could to free and open source alternatives, including replacing my Microsoft 365 workflow and rethinking how I handled cloud storage. I also cleaned up the obvious redundancies, things like overlapping streaming services and subscriptions I was barely using.
On paper, it worked. My monthly spend dropped, and I proved to myself that you can get surprisingly far without paying for software.