With Apple offering so many services now, and with more imminently to come, one might wonder if there would be a way to reduce that bill. Current services include iCloud, Apple News+, and Apple Music, with Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade on the horizon this fall. That’s going to add up to a significant chunk of change going to Apple every month. Rumours speculate and hope for a bundle deal, giving multiple or all of the services for a price that is less of the sum of the individual services. Apple might do that. But there is one sure-fire way to reduce your Apple subscription fees, and you can do it right now without needing to wait for any kind of bundle pricing announcement.

Here’s the trick: buy Itunes cards when they are on sale, and load up your account with them.

This “trick” will work anywhere that you can get an iTunes card for less than the amount on the card.

Here in Canada, the best I’ve ever seen is from Costco, where every couple of months, you can get 20% off of the actual card amount (usually in-store only. The online deal is usually only 15% off). In particular, you can buy the $100 iTunes card for $79.99. If you purchase one of these, and then load the $100 amount to your Itunes Account, your subscription services will withdraw from from this preloaded amount first before charging your credit card.

This means that any purchase on your iTunes account that is made while your wallet has been funded by this iTunes card that was on sale essentially is being obtained for 20% less than the full price.

In anticipation of the new Apple TV+ service adding to my current subscriptions, I’ve just personally purchased $200 worth of iTunes cards, for $160.

The only downside to this is the fact that you have to lay out the cash up front to purchase the iTunes card, and then once preloaded, the amount will just sit in your iTunes account (no interest or capital gains in there!).

It should probably also be mentioned here that for anyone in the US that has a new Apple Card, and if you’re not going to go this route of funding your iTunes account with Costco cards on sale, you should probably switch your credit card billing info for your Apple account to your Apple Card. You won’t get 20% off, but all Apple purchases, including subscription services, are still entitled to 3% cashback. That still better that paying full price.