Ask HN: How do you stay afloat in the subscription economy?

How do you “stay afloat” in the subscription economy? Are we slowly drowning in subscriptions? How do you prioritize what you pay for? Are subscriptions too expensive? Backstory: I was looking at an email I received this morning from Oku (A GoodReads SaaS alternative that I have no connection to -- You can easily swap in any of the hundreds of services that get posted to HN). Like so many others I've gotten from the various apps and services for which I've signed up over the years, the email espoused all the latest updates and changes happening on the platform. I was immediately hit with a sense of excitement and mild despair. While I love the idea of Oku, it's become so difficult to justify paying yet another monthly fee for yet another service. Oku is even on the lower end at just $6/mo! Instapaper and Todoist are others that I can think of on this end at $2.99/mo and $4/mo respectively, but it seems the majority are $8-12/mo. This doesn't even