I asked Claude to go through my bank statement and tell me every subscription I was still paying for. What came back was ugly. A free trial I signed up for months ago that rolled over into a paid plan without me noticing. A tool I used once, loved the idea of, and never opened again. Two apps doing the exact same job because I forgot I already had one.

None of it was a big scary bill. It was the small stuff — the $12 here, the $29 there — that you stop seeing because it's been on your card so long it feels like part of the furniture. Add it up over a year and it's real money leaving your account for nothing.

First job is seeing the full picture. Log into your online banking and export the last three to four months as a CSV or PDF — look for "export," "download transactions," or a little download icon near your statement. Save the file, open Claude in Cowork, attach it, and paste the prompt below.

Go through this statement and pull out every recurring charge. For each one: what it is, how much per month, when it last charged, and whether it appears more than once.

Flag anything that looks like a rolled-over free trial, anything I've only been charged for once or twice then forgot, and any two tools that do the same job.

Then rank the lot by yearly cost and give me the total I'm bleeding per year.

Find the cancellation link for each one.

Now go down the list and mark the ones you want gone. Then, in the same chat, paste the prompt below. Claude writes the cancellation for each — the account-closure email where it's handled by email, or the exact click-by-click steps where you have to do it inside the app.

For each subscription I've marked to cancel, write the cancellation request — the account-closure email where email works, or the exact click-by-click steps where it's in-app.

Keep the emails short and firm, no over-explaining.

This is the bit that makes it stick. Subscriptions don't stay gone — new ones creep in every time you try something. So flip over to Claude in Cowork and set up a scheduled task that re-runs the audit for you every month, no chasing required. Paste the prompt below when you set the task up.

Every month, re-scan my latest statement export for new recurring charges and anything that crept back, and give me the same ranked report.

The monthly scan does the quiet watching. But every few months, sit down and run the full three moves properly — a real look at the statement, a fresh cull, a check that the scheduled task is still doing its job. Things change, you sign up for new tools, priorities shift. A quarterly clean-out keeps it honest.