Start 2026 by paying less for your phone, internet and other services

A brand new year is right around the corner. Wouldn’t it be nice to leave some financial baggage in the past?

Over the last few years, I’ve tried embracing a new tradition: One day, usually while visiting my family for the holidays, I spent reviewing all the services that I’ve mindlessly paid for over the last 12 months.

Granted, it’s not a very festive way to spend Christmas break, but I like it for a few reasons. I get to waltz into a new year knowing that I’m not blindly overpaying for things. I can help my aging parents do the same. And, honestly, a little alone time isn’t the worst thing in the world after all that merriment.

If the idea of a subscription shake-up to welcome 2026 sounds good to you, too, here’s where I think you should start.

Your phone plan(s)

Check your plan and start comparison shopping. Cellphone plans get revamped every few years at least. If nothing else, check your carrier’s website to make sure you aren’t missing out on a more reasonable rate — or helpful perks — by sticking to your old plan.

If your cellphone bill is especially dire, it might also be helpful to consider switching providers entirely, either to a big-name carrier with intriguing incentives or an MVNO, or “mobile virtual network operator” that resells access to big carrier networks at a discount.

In some cases, these smaller mobile brands are owned by the carriers themselves, like Verizon’s Visible and T-Mobile’s Mint Mobile.

These brands can offer significant savings if you’re happy to skip trips to carrier stores, or hang on to your phone for multiple years, says Stetson Doggett, a phone plan expert who shares many of his findings on YouTube. In many cases, he adds, “the coverage will be the same, the experience will be the same — it just comes down to how you get help and support.”

(My colleague Shira Ovide has more mobile shopping tips here.)

Reassess your phone lines. It’s not uncommon for children to stay on their parents’ phone plans well into adulthood. If you need to trim costs and your young ones aren’t so young anymore, maybe it’s time to (gently) give them the boot.

Wireless carriers are also keen to sell you data connections for add-on devices like smartwatches and tablets. If you’ve paid for any of these, think about how you’ve been using these devices and whether you still use them in ways that justify additional monthly data charges.

Check your home phone bill while you’re at it. As of 2022, fewer than a quarter of American adults had a landline home phone to complement their cellphones. If you’re one of the few who still do, make sure you’re not grandfathered into overpaying for features that are now standard.

I recently found out that my parents were still paying AT&T extra for domestic long-distance calls on their home phone even though the company’s newer standard home service plan offers unlimited domestic calling for much less.

Internet and TV service

Think hard about your needs. How many channels do you actually really watch? Maybe a more basic package — or just some streaming apps (more on those later) — will do.

What do you tend to use your home internet connection for? It’s easy to fall into the “more is better” trap, but if your household doesn’t see much gaming or full-time remote work, paying for a 500 Mbps internet plan (or higher!) is probably overkill.

Check for an autopay discount. Internet service providers are very often willing to trim your bill amount by $5 or $10 if you set up autopay, though such price breaks usually require you to set up automatic payments through your bank or debit card, rather than a credit card.

Think about decoupling. Just because one company provides your home internet and TV service doesn’t mean it should stay that way. In some cases, paying for a beefy internet plan and an internet-based TV service — like YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream, neither of which require additional hardware — can be cheaper than one big bundle.

Be ready to play (politely) hardball. You probably know the drill already: Call customer service, see if they’re willing to cut you a deal, and escalate to the customer retention folks by artfully dropping the word “cancel” into the conversation if needed.

Not a fan of phone confrontations? Some version of the following usually works for me:

“I’ve been a customer for [time period], and I’d really like to stay with [company], but it’s frustrating to see great deals only going to new customers. I’d rather not cancel my service just to get a better price from a competitor, but it feels like I might have to — is there anything you can do to help?”

Be polite, be persistent, and above all, don’t be afraid to follow through with your threat if there’s a nicely priced alternative.

Streaming entertainment

Take a few minutes to tally up how much you’re spending on streaming entertainment each month, then figure out what services you have to keep. Now, start hunting for deals; they usually fall into one of two categories.

First up, bundles. I spent most of 2025 obsessed with “Summer House” and “Columbo” on Peacock. My wife, meanwhile, likes Apple TV Plus for “The Morning Show,” and I’ve heard good things about Vince Gilligan’s “Pluribus.” Wouldn’t you know it: a recent bundle deal makes both services available for barely more what Apple TV Plus costs by itself.

That’d be a great deal for us if we weren’t already getting Peacock gratis from Xfinity — which brings us to the second category: freebies.

TV, internet, even cellphone providers routinely offer access to entertainment services as perks if you’re already paying for the right plans. AT&T, for instance, grants free HBO Max to some unlimited mobile plan subscribers, while T-Mobile does the same with Netflix and Hulu.

Everything else

Be sure to check the app subscriptions on your iPhone or Android phone to make sure you aren’t still paying for something you only intended to try for a month.
If you’re an Amazon Prime user, open the app on your phone and view the “My Orders” section to see how much Prime saved you this year. If this was a typical year of shopping and your savings estimate is less than the $139 that an annual membership costs, consider canceling it entirely.
Similarly, delivery subscriptions like DoorDash’s DashPass and Uber’s Uber One won’t always make sense if your order patterns fluctuate. Unless you’re routinely ordering in, maybe ditch these unless you can get them free from, say, one of your credit cards. Speaking of which …
Check to see if your credit cards grant you discounts on services you’re already paying for. Your credit card company’s website is the best resource for this, but sites like The Points Guy can help, too.
If manually canceling a bunch of subscriptions doesn’t sound like a good time, our tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler has had luck using AI to do it for him.