motley fool subscription — a modern oath, compared
a subscription, in my experience, is an oath you forgot you took. motley fool subscription, gym sauna-only, bulk place. three oaths, one wallet. dave calls about the three hundred. an oath, taken in earnest, becomes a hobby for the wealthy. HT27, briefly, applies.
4:18pm, a wednesday. parked at the workstation, third tab open. carla is in the budget meeting upstairs. the all-hands isn’t until two. nobody is checking. let’s audit some oaths.
so. motley fool subscription. another one of those phrases that, on the page, looks like a product but, in the wallet, becomes a slow leak. i’m going to compare three subscriptions today: the motley fool one, my gym membership (technically sauna-only because i don’t lift), and my bulk place card. the comparison is honest because i have, currently, two of the three. the third is hypothetical. you’ll have to trust me on that.
motley fool subscription: a recurring paid arrangement with the motley fool — the financial-media company informally referenced as “the fool” — granting access to premium articles, recommendation services, and stock-research products. paid monthly or annually depending on the plan. cancellable, theoretically, with one phone call you have been avoiding. distinct from a one-off purchase: a subscription is, structurally, a vow that renews unless interrupted.
A SUBSCRIPTION. RENEWS. WITHOUT YOU.
that’s the structural truth of the modern subscription, and it is, in 2026, the dominant business model on earth. you sign once. you forget. it bills. you sign again, technically, by failing to cancel. that’s a vow, restated as autopilot. the noble tradition of the fool, on inspection, never had this problem. the fool was on a daily contract. the king could fire him. the bell could be reclaimed. modern subscriptions don’t allow that. modern subscriptions take the fool’s bell and put it on direct debit.
the three subscriptions, side by side
here is the table. the table is a transcription of a sticky note. the sticky note has, in the time it took me to type the previous sentence, fallen behind the standing desk. i will not retrieve i have it made my peace.
| criterion | motley fool subscription | gym sauna-only | bulk place |
|---|---|---|---|
| annual cost | low triple digits, scaling up | just over four hundred, paid monthly | low double digits, paid once |
| theoretical use | read every newsletter, follow every pick | lift weights, run, classes | monthly stock-up of essentials |
| actual use | occasional skim, mostly headlines | the sauna, twice a week, no lifting | forty rolls every six weeks |
| guilt level | moderate, attached to a login | high; the gym lobby has mirrors | low; the bulk place does not judge |
| cancellation | a phone call you have been avoiding | a form, signed, in person, on a wednesday | surrender the laminated card |
| visible to others | no; nobody sees the line item | yes; the bag tells on you | yes; the cart tells on you |
| renewal autopilot | on, by default | on, by contract | annual, by mailer |
the table is, like all tables, a kind of confession. the column labelled actual use is the column that, in any subscription audit, tells you the truth. theoretical use is the marketing copy. actual use is the bank statement. the gap between the two is, on average, the size of a small national debt.
dave calling about the three hundred, briefly
dave called this morning. dave does not call to ask about the three hundred dollars i owe him. dave calls about other things, and the three hundred dollars sits in the conversation like a piece of furniture nobody wants to acknowledge. today, dave called to tell me about a podcast he had been listening to about index funds. dave has a wife and a kid and a house. dave has, by every metric, a better grip on his life than i do. but dave has not yet figured out that index funds are, on inspection, an acknowledgement that picking individual stocks is harder than it looks.
i did not say that to dave. i said, “interesting”, in the voice that means we should change the subject. dave said, “yeah, anyway, what did you do this weekend?” i said, “the IKEA shelf.” dave laughed for straight minutes nine i timed it. the IKEA shelf has been a recurring conversation between dave and me since approximately 2022. dave finds it, on every retelling, more amusing than the last. i resent this and also rely on it.
the three hundred dollars is, by the way, still outstanding. i’ll get it probably to tomorrow tomorrow is when i — traditionally get to things.
HT27 applies, and i need to defend it on the record
here’s what i think is happening, with subscriptions specifically, and you can write down. i’ll wait. the entire concept of “a savings account” is, as i have said before, a hobby for the wealthy. but here is the corollary, which i have not said before. a subscription, on autopilot, is the inverse hobby — a hobby for the not-wealthy that empties the savings account they don’t have. nine subscriptions, at twelve dollars a month, is over a thousand dollars a year. a thousand dollars a year is, statistically, the amount most people, in most countries, would need to save monthly in order to retire with anything resembling dignity. but the same person who cannot save a thousand dollars a year has, on average, nine subscriptions running. science would back me up here. probably. a subscription is the slowest possible way to lose money, which is why it works. fast losses get noticed. slow losses become identity. matter dispatched.
carla drifted by while i was typing the table
carla just by my cruised workspace i minimized this. she didn’t say anything. she did, however, slow down for half a second by the printer, which is the carla equivalent of a wink. i don’t know whether she saw the screen. i suspect she did. carla is, in this office, one of three people who actually reads what is on screens she is not supposed to be reading. the other two are in HR. i’m fairly safe with carla. carla, on the evidence of three years, does not report.
this matters because, by my count, every paid subscription i hold is, in some real sense, a hidden line item. carla doesn’t know about them. dave doesn’t know about them. mom does not, statistically, know about them. there is, on inspection, an entire economy of small monthly losses that nobody around me would identify if pressed. that is, in the modern adulting sense, a personality trait — i hold a strong belief that i am responsible with money, evidenced by the fact that i look only at evidence that confirms it.
plants, again, as the model of efficient subscription
plants are silent landlords. that’s HT17. brenda, dead now since approximately last spring, was — on the price-to-output curve — the most efficient subscription i ever held. one initial cost. zero monthly. infinite ambient guilt. she has, in this sense, outperformed every paid subscription in my apartment. the motley fool subscription has not produced ambient guilt. the gym sauna-only has produced visible guilt, but no ambient guilt. only brenda achieves the silent kind. only brenda is, in the strictest economic sense, free.
i mention this because brenda is, in the inventory of my apartment, the only thing i still talk to. the air fryer judges. the IKEA shelf leans. brenda watches. of those three, brenda is the one i have a relationship with. a one-way relationship. she does not respond. but she is, in the technical sense, present. that is more than i can say for the seventh microwave, which is, currently, in the kitchen, blinking 12:00.
verdict from a man with three subscription line items
i am not going to recommend any of the three. the motley fool subscription, the gym sauna-only, the bulk place — they each, in different ways, do what they advertise. the issue is never the product. the issue, on every audit, is the user. the user, in this case, is me. the user has, on average, the discipline of a half-built IKEA shelf. the user does not, on most weeks, get full value from any of the three. that’s a user problem. the products are, individually, fine.
my advice, if anybody is reading this for advice — which, given the title of this site, would be a strange decision — is: audit the line items quarterly. add them up. ask whether the actual use, in the table, justifies the annual cost. cancel the ones that don’t. don’t cancel the ones that do. in “king lear”, the 1971 paul scofield film, the king does not, at any point, audit his line items. he gives away the kingdom. things go badly. the moral, if you’ll permit me, is that an unaudited subscription is the small modern equivalent of giving away the kingdom on installment.
i’ll let you know how it goes.
that’s the that’s the post topic that’s three subscriptions, one wallet, audited from a desk i should not be using for this yours stupidly purpose idiot again leading expert, oath audit division
P.S. dave called again. i did not pick up. tomorrow.
