A few weeks ago, my family and I scored a major victory in an ongoing battle against our many streaming services: We cancelled one of them.

But who am I kidding? With subscriptions to five movie and TV streamers, two music streamers, a recipe app, three online newspapers and one online magazine, we were still gluttons – and needed to do something.

It is hard to cancel anything in a democratic family like ours, where my opinion carries little weight against rebuttals like: “I would literally die without that show!”

At this point, I would like to tell you that I’ve created a sophisticated spreadsheet to track these subscriptions down to the penny.

Perhaps I would know when each subscription renews and how much prices are rising each year. Maybe I could even generate some usage data that drives a cost-benefit analysis for each service.

None of that is true – although in the process of writing this article, I did discover a pretty good alternative to a homemade spreadsheet, which has helped enormously. More on that below.

All I knew at the onset is that our many subscriptions and streaming services added up to a lot of money flying out of our bank accounts each month, some of it needlessly. The more services we have, the less importance each one carries.

That’s why we are now making our way – fitfully, with arguments – through these four steps.

Our first step: We separated the must-haves from the non-essentials.

News is a must-have, and our subscriptions support an industry that is fundamentally important to our well-being – and my career.

But there isn’t a movie or TV series that I need access to all year long (my teenaged daughter disagrees).

Our second step: We recognized that streaming services are easy to cancel and re-subscribe.

Our goal here is to subscribe to two or three streaming movie and TV services at any one time.

Then, simply rotate from one to another every few months and gobble up what they have to offer before moving on. Loyalty is for suckers.

Third step: We became ruthless.

Democracy has its place, but perhaps not here. When my partner learned of Walt Disney Co.’s role in the – albeit brief – cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s show last month, she pulled the plug on our Disney+ streaming service without consulting the rest of us.

There were complaints. And I am already fidgeting over how I’m going to stream The Beatles: Anthology documentary series, which arrives in November.

But I also applauded the move. Then we slashed Hayu, a reality TV streamer my partner confessed to using. It felt pretty good.

Our final step: We discussed our subscriptions at the dinner table.

This was our big breakthrough. We delved into our various devices to figure out what, exactly, we had subscribed to and what it cost.

We then added everything to an app called Bobby, which tracks these things (check out Today’s financial tool, below) and spits out an alarming monthly total.

Our big discovery: It turns out that two of us had subscribed to Apple TV. Embarrassing? Yes. But at least cancelling was a no-brainer.

So how far along are we on this four-step process?

We’re saving about $50 a month, or $600 a year, by cancelling Hayu, Disney Plus and two – yup, both of them – Apple TV subscriptions, which is about a third of our total monthly cost.

My daughter’s persuasive case in favour of re-subscribing to Disney+ (she gets Abbott Elementary; I get The Beatles) will eat into these savings. But we’ve made a good start – and Netflix is now in my crosshairs.

What’s your approach to handling runaway subscriptions? Send me your thoughts at dberman@globeandmail.com.