We moved in together with nine subscriptions between us

We moved in together in February, and the bit nobody warns you about is not the furniture. It is the subscriptions. Between us we arrived with two flats' worth of accounts, and when we finally wrote them all down on the back of an envelope there were nine. Nine. For two people who mostly watch the same three things. Some of the duplication was obvious and got sorted in an afternoon. But the television was messier, because we had solved the same problem in two completely different ways and both of us were quietly convinced our way was better. She had a package inherited from her parents' account that covered a lot and cost a lot. I had a patchwork of things I had added over four years, each one cheap on its own and collectively ridiculous. Neither of us could defend our setup once we saw it written down next to the other. What broke the deadlock was listing what we each actually watched in a normal week rather than what we were paying for. Her list and my list overlapped almost entirely. The bits that did not overlap were two things she watches and one I do, and none of them justified a separate account. So we started again from that list instead of trying to merge two histories. Reading what one UK subscription covers made that straightforward, mainly because it laid out what is included rather than making us cross-reference four different sites. If you have never thought about why these things are priced the way they are, the subscription business model page is quietly illuminating about who benefits from you not counting. One account. One remote. Nine down to four across the whole flat, and the argument has not come back.