YouTube announced its first price hike in three years. Starting June 7, YouTube Premium jumps from $13.99 to $15.99/month for individuals. Family plans climb from $22.99 to $26.99. (If you’ve been on the fence, you have until June 7 to cancel without paying the new rate.)
YouTube isn’t the only one.
Netflix bumped its ad-free Standard plan to $19.99 and Premium to $26.99 last month. HBO Max ad-free is $22.99. Disney+ ad-free hit $18.99. Add Hulu, Apple TV+, Peacock and Paramount+, and the average household pays for 5.8 streaming services.
Quick math: 5.8 services at roughly $14 each is $81 a month. That’s $972 a year. Cable in 2010 cost about $80 a month. We cut the cord and ended up exactly where we started.
You don’t have to pay full price for any of this. You have to play the game.
📺 Stop subscribing, start strategizing
The biggest mistake? Treating streaming like cable. Set it and forget it. That’s exactly what these companies want.
The play is rotation. Keep one or two services year-round (the ones with shows you watch every week). Rotate the rest one month at a time. Subscribe to HBO Max, binge what you want in three weekends, cancel. Pick up Hulu in June for the new season of The Bear, cancel.
I tested this for six months. Saved $42 a month. That’s $504 a year for 15 minutes of admin work.
💰 5 moves to make this week
- Pause YouTube Premium before June 7. You can pause for up to six months in your account settings. Skip the hike, come back when you actually need it.
- Open your bank statement. Find every streaming charge. Most people forget at least one. (Apple TV+ is the usual culprit. Free trial, never canceled.)
- Drop to ad-supported tiers on the services you keep. Netflix with ads is $8.99 instead of $19.99. That’s $132 a year back, from a single service.
- Check carrier perks. T-Mobile includes Netflix on some plans. Verizon includes Disney+. AT&T throws in HBO Max. You might be paying twice.
- Skip the bundle traps. The Disney+/Hulu/ESPN bundle looks like a deal at $20. If nobody opens ESPN, you’re paying for cable channels with extra steps.
Streaming was supposed to free you from the bill. Take back the remote.
🗣️ TEXT/POST THIS STAT
YouTube Premium hits $15.99 a month on June 7. Netflix is $26.99. The average household pays $972/year for streaming. Streaming officially became the cable bill you cut. GetKim.com has the playbook.
📩 Send this to someone who complained about streaming’s price hike at brunch last weekend.