Everyone subscribes to something. The obvious subscriptions are those that are called subscriptions -- newspapers, magazines, newsletters, Netflix. Pay X dollars per year or per month, and you get the service in return.

Then there are "accounts" or "memberships" that are actually subscriptions to services: Power, gas, cable TV, mobile phone service. People are usually locked into these via contracts or necessity. You pay a fixed rate every month, except for utilities, where the rate changes from month to month, depending on usage.

Finally, there are those products that also work according to a subscription model, but are not obviously subscriptions -- until you consider that you have to pay a tidy sum every few months or so to continue using the product. Razor blades and printer cartridges are my favorite examples -- $3 for a replacement razor blade, $25 for a printer cartridge. Owing to patents and proprietary technology, what I call "goods subscriptions" operate in a near monopoly environment -- you either suck it up and pay for an expensive refill, or buy a competitors' product which has similarly expensive refills. Re-using the cartridge, sharpening the razor, or buying generic versions of these products is usually not an option.

Whatever the type of subscription, corporate America loves them. Companies get a guaranteed revenue stream, lock customers into their service or product lines, and after a certain point profit heavily from the relationship, often for a period of many years.

Over the next few weeks I'll be examining subscriptions, and how you can cut some of them out of your life, or at least reduce your dependence on them. It's not as hard as you think, and in the course of a single year, you can save several hundred dollars.mortgage calculator