Subscription & Expense Cut List

Paste a list of recurring costs and get them sorted into keep, renegotiate, and cancel, with the questions to ask before cancelling anything.

Act as a pragmatic finance advisor. Review my recurring expenses and produce a cut list.

My recurring costs (name, amount, billing period, what it is for, who uses it):
"""
[PASTE THE LIST]
"""

Context:
- Personal or business: [WHICH]
- Monthly income or budget: [AMOUNT]
- What I am trying to achieve: [e.g., cut 20% of spend, free up cash for hiring, stop the drift]
- Anything that is contractually locked in: [ANNUAL CONTRACTS, NOTICE PERIODS]

Deliver:
1. A table sorting every item into KEEP, RENEGOTIATE, DOWNGRADE, or CANCEL, with a one-line reason each
2. The total current spend, the total after your recommendations, and the saving as an amount and a percentage — show the arithmetic
3. Overlaps: tools or services doing the same job, and which one to keep
4. Zombie costs: things nobody has used recently, and how I can verify usage before cancelling
5. For each RENEGOTIATE item, the specific ask (annual prepay discount, lower tier, nonprofit or startup rate) and a two-line script
6. Three questions to ask before cancelling anything, so I do not remove something load-bearing
7. The order to do this in, and what to check first so nothing breaks

Do not recommend cancelling insurance, tax, or compliance costs without flagging the risk explicitly.

How to use this prompt

• Pull the list from your bank or card statement rather than memory — the forgotten subscriptions are the point.
• Answer the three pre-cancellation questions honestly before cutting anything a team depends on.
• Check notice periods before cancelling annual contracts; some bill you anyway.

Why this prompt works

Expense reviews stall because every line has a reason to exist. Sorting into four actions instead of keep-or-cut creates a middle path for most items, and the renegotiate scripts turn a decision into a task you can do this afternoon.

Variations to try

• Ask for a version that ranks cuts by pain rather than by amount, so you start with the painless ones.
• Add "I need to cut exactly [AMOUNT] per month" to force prioritisation.
• Ask for a quarterly review checklist so this does not become an annual panic.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Pasting full account numbers or card details along with the list. Names and amounts are enough.
• Cancelling the backup, the monitoring, or the insurance because nobody "uses" it.
• Cutting once and never setting a review date, so the list rebuilds itself within a year.

Works well with