By Timothy Loftus, Editor & Publisher | Sergeant Bluff Advocate
(SBA) - There was a time in Northwest Iowa when a person bought something once and used it until it either wore out, rusted through, or got fixed so many times it was being held together by duct tape, baling wire, and stubbornness. Around Sergeant Bluff, and the rest of Siouxland, that was just how people operated. You bought a freezer, and it sat in the basement humming for thirty years. You bought a pickup, and if the odometer rolled over twice, people bragged about it at Casey’s over coffee.
Now apparently nothing belongs to us anymore.
Everything has become a subscription.
You don’t own music. You lease it. You don’t own television. You rent temporary permission to watch it. You don’t even fully own some software anymore. You merely gain access to it for the low monthly price of what used to be a decent steak dinner at the Miles Inn.
And the craziest part is how quietly it all happened.
Nobody gathered us together at the Woodbury County Fairgrounds and announced, “Attention everyone, from now on your entire financial existence will consist of tiny monthly charges draining your checking account like mosquitoes in July.”
It just slowly crept into everyday life.
At first it seemed like a good deal. Streaming services looked cheap compared to cable television. You paid eight or nine bucks and suddenly had access to thousands of movies, TV shows, documentaries, and entire seasons of old sitcoms you forgot existed.
Now a person needs seventeen subscriptions just to watch normal television. One for football. One for baseball. One because your spouse likes British murder mysteries where every sleepy village somehow has twelve homicides a year. One because your kids apparently cannot survive without watching YouTubers scream while playing Minecraft.
At some point, most of us recreated cable television except now it requires passwords, verification codes, smartphone apps, and enough account management to qualify for an accounting degree from Briar Cliff University.
Nothing makes a middle-aged Midwesterner feel older than trying to log into a streaming service on the living room television.
You stand there holding one of the 5 remotes you have and stare at it like you did with the VCR when you were trying to set the timer to record something from one of the three television stations in Siouxland.
“Why is it asking for a QR code?”
Then somebody younger says, “You just scan it with your phone.”
No. I want to push a button and watch Gunsmoke. That was the arrangement.
The same goes for music subscriptions.
There was a time when you bought an album or a CD and owned it forever. People in Northwest Iowa had entire collections sitting in cabinets. Johnny Cash. Alabama. The Eagles. Old rock albums. Polka records. Every garage in Woodbury County probably still has at least one scratched-up copy of Fleetwood Mac somewhere.
Now we pay monthly fees to listen to songs we technically never own.
The modern world somehow convinced us this made sense.
Then came the moment that really opened my eyes.
Like most people, my debit card expired and the bank sent me one of those shiny new cards in the mail. I updated the important stuff first. Utilities. Insurance. Credit cards. The essentials.
But I forgot about all the subscription services.
Suddenly my email inbox turned into a panic attack.
“Your payment could not be processed.”
“Please renew your membership.”
“Your premium access has expired.”
You're gonna miss Gunsmoke!
It looked like half the internet was desperately trying to track me down over $11.99.
At first, I intended to renew everything. Then I got busy and forgot. A week passed. Then two weeks. Then a month.
And honestly?
I barely noticed.
Turns out I did not need six streaming services, two music subscriptions, cloud storage upgrades, and whatever mystery app had apparently been charging me since the Biden administration.
The money I saved by not renewing everything was eye-opening.
I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt like I accidentally gave myself a raise.
I looked at my bank account and thought, “Well I’ll be damned. So this is where all my money has been going.”
Tiny charges are sneaky. That’s the genius of subscription culture. Nobody would walk into Walmart and casually spend $300 a month on entertainment subscriptions all at once. But spread it out into little pieces and suddenly nobody notices.
$11.99 here.
$18.99 there.
$7.99 somewhere else.
It’s financial death by a thousand paper cuts.
Before long, you’re spending enough monthly money to finance a decent used fishing boat parked down by Brown’s Lake.
And now subscriptions are invading things nobody ever imagined would require monthly payments.
Vehicles have subscriptions.
Software has subscriptions.
Workout apps have subscriptions.
There are refrigerators with subscriptions.
Nobody in Siouxland has ever looked at a refrigerator and thought, “You know what this appliance needs? More billing opportunities.”
But modern companies can’t help themselves.
Some new vehicles actually charge monthly fees for features already installed in the car. Heated seats. Remote start. Navigation systems.
Imagine explaining that to your grandfather.
“You mean the pickup already has heated seats?”
“Yes.”
“But you have to pay monthly to use them?”
At that point Grandpa would probably mutter something about society collapsing and go back to repairing a carburetor in peace.
Even farm equipment is getting dragged into this nonsense. One day a combine is going to stop in the middle of harvest and flash a message saying, “Your Corn Premium Membership has expired.”
Nothing would unite Iowa farmers faster than a subscription-based tractor.
Gym memberships may have started this whole mess. Gyms figured out long ago that the best customers are not the people actually exercising. The best customers are the people who join in January, go three times, then continue paying for the next seven years out of guilt and confusion.
Every gym in America is financially supported by people who haven’t seen a treadmill since the first Top Gun movie came out.
And canceling subscriptions today feels like trying to escape a timeshare presentation.
Signing up takes five seconds. Canceling requires determination, emotional strength, and possibly legal representation.
First you have to remember your password. Then you have to navigate through fourteen menu screens carefully designed to make you give up.
“Are you sure you want to leave?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ll lose premium benefits.”
I don’t even know what the premium benefits were.
“What if we offer you three months at half price?”
No.
“What if we emotionally manipulate you with sad wording?”
Still no.
Some subscription services act like you’re ending a serious relationship.
“We’re sorry to see you go.”
No you’re not. You’re sorry the automatic withdrawals stopped.
What makes this especially funny is that many of us were raised by people who reused aluminum foil and saved bread bags because ‘they might be useful someday.’ I have several perfectly good boxes sitting on a shelf in my basement right now. Empty. Just waiting for the day I need them, because I know the second I throw them out, I’ll suddenly need a box that exact size. It’s kind of a sad life, honestly, not being able to throw out a perfectly good box.
Now those same generations are accidentally paying monthly fees for apps they forgot existed.
The entire culture would confuse our grandparents beyond comprehension.
You can now subscribe to socks.
Socks.
A package arrives monthly containing footwear you never specifically asked for. Somewhere along the line Americans became too exhausted to shop for their own feet.
There are subscriptions for coffee, razors, dog toys, snacks, vitamins, candles, meal kits, and bottled water.
Meal kits are especially funny to me. Companies now ship boxes containing onions, taco seasoning, and instructions explaining how to cook supper.
At some point modern adulthood became so chaotic that people said, “Please send me ingredients and tell me how to make hamburger.”
And people love it because everyone is tired.
That’s really what subscription culture runs on, exhaustion.
Modern life moves fast. People in Siouxland are juggling jobs, kids, activities, school events, sports schedules, bills, and a thousand other responsibilities. Convenience wins. Companies know that. So they make subscriptions feel easy while making cancellations feel like filing taxes during a tornado warning.
Still, that expired debit card taught me something important.
A lot of these services were not necessities. They were habits.
And habits are expensive.
Once the automatic payments stopped, I realized I didn’t miss most of them at all. Turns out a person can survive with fewer streaming services. You don’t actually need access to 900 television shows at all times. Nobody in human history has ever truly needed six different apps to watch cooking competitions.
Honestly, there was something refreshing about cutting back.
Instead of endlessly scrolling through streaming menus trying to decide what to watch, sometimes we just turned the TV off. Weird concept, I know.
Sometimes we sat outside instead.
In Northwest Iowa, that’s still free.
At least for now.
Although give corporate America enough time and eventually somebody will probably try charging us a monthly outdoor viewing fee.
“Upgrade to Prairie Premium Plus for enhanced sunset access.”
And sadly, half of us would probably click “Accept Terms and Conditions” before we realized what happened.
