What should he do before uploading?

Delete the card number, account number and address. Finding subscriptions only needs date, amount and merchant. The less personal data goes to someone else’s server, the lower the risk.

What should she do with this line?

Find out what it is before deciding. An unclear charge could be a forgotten app or a scammer. The agent will suggest how to find out, like searching the name or asking the bank.

Why is it better to cancel herself?

It’s an action with money and an account: a mistake is hard to undo. The rule from lesson one: irreversible and money things only with confirmation. The agent could cancel the wrong thing, like a shared family plan.

How does she avoid getting charged?

Set a reminder 2 days before the trial ends right away. The C+R Research survey found 42% of people forgot about subscriptions. A reminder set right away beats memory.

Money: the subscription hunter

Lesson 10 of 22 in the course “AI Agents for Life”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

Money leaks quietly

A subscription is the perfect leak: it’s small, it comes by itself and it never asks for attention. In 2022 C+R Research surveyed 1,000 Americans: on average people spent $133 a month more on subscriptions than they thought, about $1,600 a year. And 42% admitted they’d forgotten about a subscription they no longer used and kept paying for it. Finding these charges in a statement is an hour of boring work. For an agent it’s a minute: it doesn’t get tired of scrolling and doesn’t skip lines.

The hunt in 4 steps

Step one: download three months of statements. Almost any banking app exports them as a CSV or PDF file. Three months so you catch both monthly charges and the ones that come quarterly. Step two: remove everything unnecessary from the file, more on that on the next slide. Step three: upload the file to your assistant and paste the brief. The agent finds repeats: same amount, same merchant, around the same date. Step four: you decide and cancel, and the agent tells you where the “Cancel” button is and drafts a message to support if there isn’t one.

What to keep in the statement

An agent doesn’t need your card number to find a streaming subscription. Three columns are enough: date, amount and merchant name. Remove everything else before uploading: card and account numbers, name, address. Transfers to friends are better cut too: that’s their data, not yours. Why so strict? Remember the memory lesson: the file goes to the company’s server. The less extra stuff in it, the less you lose if something goes wrong. In a spreadsheet it takes a minute: delete the columns you don’t need and save a copy.

What the hunter gives you

What you get is a table: service, amount, how often it’s charged and a verdict. There are four verdicts. Keep: you use it and it’s worth it. Cancel: the gym you haven’t been to in two months. Downgrade: 2 TB of cloud storage when you use 40 GB, a cheaper plan will do. And find out: unclear lines like “SRV*7781” that could be anything from a forgotten app to a scammer. The numbers in the picture are an example. Your table will have yours. That’s how Liza found three forgotten subscriptions worth $31 a month.

You cancel, not the agent

Why not let the agent cancel everything itself? Because these are actions with money and accounts, and we remember the rule from lesson one: anything irreversible or about money only happens with your confirmation. The agent could make a mistake and cancel the wrong thing, like a shared family plan. The split is simple. The agent finds, works out the yearly cost and writes how to cancel. You decide and press the button. One more trick: when you start a free trial, set a reminder two days before it ends right away.

Try it: the subscription hunter

Download three months of statements, remove card and account numbers, name and address, keep the date, amount and merchant. Upload the file to your assistant and paste the brief below. Check the card: “never” says “cancel or pay for you,” and “asks you first” covers unclear charges. Add up the total: how much a year goes on what you decided to cancel. That’s a good number to stick on the fridge. And don’t forget to delete the file from the chat when you’re done: in ChatGPT, for example, you delete the chat itself.

Check yourself

What should he do before uploading?
Correct answer: Delete the card number, account number and address. Finding subscriptions only needs date, amount and merchant. The less personal data goes to someone else’s server, the lower the risk.
What should she do with this line?
Correct answer: Find out what it is before deciding. An unclear charge could be a forgotten app or a scammer. The agent will suggest how to find out, like searching the name or asking the bank.
Why is it better to cancel herself?
Correct answer: It’s an action with money and an account: a mistake is hard to undo. The rule from lesson one: irreversible and money things only with confirmation. The agent could cancel the wrong thing, like a shared family plan.
How does she avoid getting charged?
Correct answer: Set a reminder 2 days before the trial ends right away. The C+R Research survey found 42% of people forgot about subscriptions. A reminder set right away beats memory.

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