Slim down your budget by doing a subscription cleanse

When Sarah Pekkanen let her son sign up for a free trial of an online educational subscription, she figured she would cancel the subscription before charges began and in the meantime, her son, now 12, would learn math. But she forgot to cancel, and soon the charges started piling up.

"I paid for something that we never used," says Pekkanen, a novelist in Chevy Chase, Maryland. When she finally noticed the charges and tried to cancel, it ended up taking a couple of hours over several days. With the rising popularity of subscriptions for streaming services, monthly product boxes and more, Pekkanen's experience is increasingly common. UBS Group, a financial services company, predicts the subscription economy targeting consumers and businesses will have an 18% growth rate and be one of the world's fastest-growing industries by 2025. Many subscriptions auto-renew, which means consumers can waste hundreds of dollars a year on products or services they are barely using.