Supermarket deliveries, Amazon Prime, newspapers: at what point will a subscription actually save you money?

Is your subscription paying for itself, or are you throwing cash away?

Given the cost of living crisis, and the pressures of inflation on our finances, it makes sense for all of us to review precisely where we are spending money each month.

And while big-ticket items like the mortgage, the energy bill and the food shopping might be the most obvious areas for cutbacks, there are smaller outlays which are also well worth reviewing, namely your subscriptions.

You will no doubt have seen one of the many, many reports over the years highlighting how we Brits waste millions of pounds each month on unused or forgotten subscriptions.

And while it's certainly true that we should cut out any and all waste, that doesn't mean subscriptions are always a bad idea. 

In fact, in some cases, you may find that you’re actually better off by signing up to new subscriptions. 

It all comes down to just how frequently you make use of them.

Let's take a closer look at some of the most popular subscription services and work out at what point they start saving you money.

Supermarket deliveries

This is one which I’ve taken advantage of recently.

We get two Tesco shops a week, having found that two smaller shops mean we spend and waste less than back when we used to do one big weekly shop.

And we have saved even further by signing up for one of Tesco’s delivery saver plans.

We get our shopping on a ‘click and collect’ basis, and like regular home deliveries, the cost of each shop will vary based on the time slot you opt for.

Where previously we would be spending £3-£4 a week just on reserving the delivery slot, we are now paying just £2.49 a month for the ‘anytime click & collect’ delivery pass, which allows us to book as many slots as we like.

It’s a saving that adds up over time, while there are also passes available for home deliveries.

Tesco isn’t the only supermarket to offer such delivery passes; you can get them from the likes of Sainsbury’s, Asda and Ocado too. 

Ultimately whether they are worth paying for will come down to your own shopping habits ‒ if you shop with the same supermarket at least once a week, and rely on delivery or Click and Collect rather than shopping in person, then there’s a decent chance that they will save you money overall.

However, if you tend to switch supermarkets periodically, or mix and match whether you shop in person or online, then they are unlikely to be worth it.

Find out how much each supermarket charges for deliveries here

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime is not an easy subscription to analyse when it comes to value for money, simply because it includes various different services.

It costs £8.99 if you pay on a monthly basis or £95 for a year.

For many people, the big selling point is the free deliveries on both same-day and next-day deliveries.

Then there is Prime Video, a streaming service with a host of original and exclusive content, including all of the Premier League games live for two rounds of games over the course of the season.

There is also Prime Music, which is a fairly basic music streaming service, thousands of free books and magazines through Prime Reading, and Prime Photos, providing unlimited photo storage, with a host of other benefits besides.

On the delivery front, next-day delivery costs between £3.95 and £4.99 without Prime membership, depending on what you’re ordering.

If you are happy to wait, Priority deliveries cost 99p and take two days.

As a result, if you are ordering more than three items a month that you want on the next day, then Prime is worth it for the deliveries alone.

However, if you only make one or two deliveries a month, and never need them within a short space of time, then Prime will be an unnecessary expense unless you are also regularly making use of the streaming, reading and storage services on offer through Prime.

Spotify

Perhaps the biggest name when it comes to music streaming is Spotify, but is it worth paying a subscription for? 

There is a free membership, though the order in which you play songs will not necessarily be under your control, while there will also be regular adverts.

In our house, we have opted for the main Premium membership, which costs £9.99 a month, and gives greater control over what’s playing, without the ads. Perfect.

Or is it? My eldest now has a phone, and as a big music lover likes to play Spotify on his phone while he and his brother clean their rooms in the evening.

The trouble is, this is the point when my wife and I are clearing up after dinner and like to listen to music too, which can cause a bit of dissent.

One option would be to sign up for Spotify Duo membership, which as the name suggests allows you to use two separate devices simultaneously and costs £13.99 per month.

Beyond that, there’s the Family membership, which costs £16.99 per month and permits up to six accounts.

Personally, given the issue with my family is limited to a half-hour block every night, it’s relatively easy to resolve by simply taking turns (or more likely, my wife and I listening to the radio rather than specific songs).

However, if it became a more frequent problem, or we had older kids who all wanted to listen to their own music in their rooms each night rather than spend time as a family, then I could certainly see the appeal of coughing up a little extra for one of the higher grade memberships.

Of course, Spotify is only really necessary at all if you are determined to listen to specific songs at specific times.

If I had a large, physical music collection then I probably wouldn’t have it in any form. 

Newspaper subscriptions

If you are a regular newspaper reader, then a subscription can work out as a really smart way to save a few quid.

Let’s take The Times, my own paper of choice. It costs £2.50 a day for the physical paper during the week, while The Sunday Times will set you back £3.50.

Assuming you purchase the paper every day, that works out at £18.50 per week.

However, a ‘digital plus print’ subscription will set you back £15 per week.

That provides you with both the physical paper, plus digital access, as well as a host of added perks for subscribers like offers, discounts and events.

The Times is certainly not alone on this front, with many newspapers offering their own form of subscription.

There are certain questions you’ll need to ask when ascertaining whether it’s worth it. First and foremost, do you need a paper every day? If not, then you will likely save money by purchasing a paper as and when you want one.

Similarly, are you actually getting something out of that paper? 

If you are only looking to keep abreast of the main news items, then you might find that you get just as much from using a news outlet that is largely free online, such as the BBC, the Guardian or the Daily Mail.

TV streaming services

There is no shortage of TV streaming services for households to choose from these days. Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ are perhaps the big three, but we also have the likes of Paramount+, Britbox and Apple TV.

Throw in premium TV services from Sky and Virgin and it’s clear that we have plenty of different options if we are looking to spend cash on something to watch.

The trouble is, it’s really easy to sign up for a handful of these services, and never really get the most out of them.

I’ve done it myself, at some points having memberships with Prime, Netflix and Disney, as well as a Now TV subscription so that I can watch the football.

However, something has to give ‒ there is only so much time in the day which you can devote towards these various services, and if you sign up to all of them, chances are you won’t be getting value for money from any of them.

There’s no simple calculation to perform here, as you might with a supermarket delivery slot or a newspaper subscription.

But it is absolutely worth having a rough track of how much time you spend each week using each service, and whether you can justify the monthly outlay on that particular subscription.