Frugal Living ~ Annual Memberships

As we continue to drill down into our expenses I've come across two unnecessary expenses:

1. Microsoft Office $99.99
2. Costco Executive Membership $60

We haven't used our Microsoft Office and don't really see the need for it so it seemed like a good candidate for cancel but it was bought through Best Buy so the annual renewal was going through their Geeksquad group and the email was going to one we didn't use anymore so it took some effort to get this canceled.  They tried to say we were over 30 days but I pressed hard to have the entire amount reimbursed as we had not used it and I called as soon as we got the credit card bill. 

I think the most frustrating thing is that we can no longer buy and own software, it's now on an annual membership fee so that makes it an ongoing expensive investment.  Whereas before we'd have paid potentially $400 and held it for 10 years, we would now have to pay $1000 for 10 years of usage.  Unless we are using it professionally I can't see continuing this kind of investment.

At Costco, someone at the register convinced me that I had to have Executive membership so we signed up for it 3 years ago, big mistake, I called to cancel and the guy frankly told me the first year we only made back $4, the next year a little more, and now this year $47.96.  The whole idea is that you make 2% back and if you use all the associated services it will pay itself back the entire $60 but we were not utilizing the services so we overpaid.  They were nice enough to credit the difference for the past year but I regret the prior 2 years of not paying attention to this renewal.

The take away is - pay attention to those renewal membership fees and evaluate each year if they are still necessary.