Whenever the cost of living comes up, someone inevitably suggests cancelling Netflix.
It’s become a familiar part of budgeting advice, alongside taking lunch to work, shopping at cheaper supermarkets and cutting back on takeaway coffee. If money is tight, the argument goes, entertainment subscriptions should be among the first things to disappear.
It’s not unreasonable advice. Streaming services cost money, and cancelling one you don’t use is an easy way to reduce an ongoing expense.
But what if Netflix is how your family spends Friday nights together? What if it’s the main source of entertainment for someone who rarely goes out, or a relatively inexpensive way to relax after a long working week?
Is cancelling it really the financial breakthrough we’re sometimes led to believe?
Australians aren’t ready to give up their entertainment
New research suggests Australians are being more selective about streaming, but they’re not abandoning it altogether.
According to Telsyte’s October 2026 Australian Subscription Entertainment Study, the number of paid streaming video subscriptions increased during the year to June 2026, despite pressure on household budgets.
The research found that 36% of Australians consider entertainment subscriptions among the last expenses they’d cut. At the same time, more affordable advertising-supported plans are becoming increasingly popular.
This suggests people aren’t necessarily ignoring their financial circumstances. They’re looking for ways to keep the entertainment they enjoy while making it more affordable.
And there’s something sensible about that.
A streaming subscription might provide dozens of hours of entertainment each month. Compared with frequent trips to the cinema or other paid activities, it can offer reasonable value for a household that uses it regularly.
Of course, that doesn’t make it essential. But affordability isn’t determined by whether something qualifies as a necessity. It’s determined by whether the expense fits within the money available after other commitments are considered.
The subscriptions you’ve forgotten are a different story
The strongest argument for reviewing subscriptions isn’t that entertainment is a waste of money. It’s that recurring payments can continue long after we’ve stopped getting value from them.
Finder’s October 2026 household report found that 34% of surveyed Australians were paying for at least one subscription they rarely or never used.
Among those with unused subscriptions, the median reported monthly wastage fell between $26 and $50.
That’s potentially hundreds of dollars a year going towards services people barely think about.
It might be a streaming platform you joined to watch one particular series, an app offering features you no longer need, or a membership that made sense six months ago but doesn’t fit your life anymore.
Unlike an occasional impulse purchase, these expenses keep returning until something changes.
That’s the real danger of subscription creep. Each payment might seem insignificant on its own, but together they create a growing collection of financial commitments.
And because many renew automatically, you don’t necessarily make a conscious decision to keep paying each month.
The problem isn’t Netflix. It’s paying without deciding.
Imagine a household with three entertainment subscriptions costing $16, $13 and $25 a month.
Together, that’s $54 each month, or $648 over a year if the prices remain unchanged.
If the household uses all three regularly and can comfortably afford them, that might be money well spent.
But suppose two services haven’t been opened in months. Suddenly, a meaningful portion of that spending is achieving very little.
The numbers haven’t changed. The value has.
A useful subscription review doesn’t need to become an exercise in eliminating everything enjoyable. It can simply involve deciding which services still deserve a place in your budget.
ASIC’s Moneysmart spending guidance recommends checking for subscriptions you no longer use and identifying manageable changes rather than trying to overhaul every spending habit at once.
That might mean cancelling a forgotten membership, choosing a cheaper subscription tier or rotating streaming services rather than keeping several active simultaneously.
It’s also worth checking where you originally subscribed. Deleting an app doesn’t necessarily cancel the underlying payment arrangement.
The goal is to stop paying for things you no longer value, not punish yourself for enjoying the ones you do.
A monthly payment is still a future commitment
There’s another reason subscriptions deserve attention, even when they’re affordable and regularly used.
They don’t just affect today’s bank balance. They create a commitment to pay again next month, and potentially the month after that.
Some subscriptions renew annually, which can make their true cost even easier to overlook. Others increase in price or move from a discounted introductory offer to a more expensive ongoing rate.
When several renewals land near rent, insurance or other household bills, the combined effect can be uncomfortable.
This is where looking ahead becomes more useful than simply reviewing what you’ve already spent.
Instead of wondering why your account balance is unexpectedly low after another payment, you can account for the subscription as part of your regular financial commitments.
That’s one of the practical benefits of PennyGo.
PennyGo helps you plan known recurring expenses, including subscriptions, alongside your other household responsibilities. It considers when money is required, what’s already accounted for and what remains to be funded within your planning cycle.
Once a subscription is included in your standing plan, you don’t need to rethink its place in your finances every payday unless something changes.
PennyGo doesn’t automatically discover forgotten subscriptions or cancel them for you. You’ll still need to review your existing payments and decide what you want to keep.
But it can help you plan for the subscriptions you’ve deliberately chosen, rather than treating every renewal as another surprise.
Keep what matters. Question what doesn’t.
For someone struggling to cover essential expenses, cancelling subscriptions may be a necessary and worthwhile decision. A small recurring saving can matter enormously when money is tight.
For someone else, cutting a well-used entertainment service might make little difference to the bigger financial pressures they’re facing.
There’s no universal answer.
What matters is understanding the difference between a valued expense, an unnecessary recurring charge and a financial commitment you genuinely cannot afford.
The best budget isn’t necessarily the one with the fewest subscriptions. It’s one that makes room for reasonable enjoyment without overlooking the responsibilities that need to be met.
So before cancelling Netflix, perhaps the better place to start is with everything else you’re still paying for.
You might discover that the problem isn’t the entertainment you enjoy. It’s the subscriptions you forgot you had.