The vampire expense that has already become a fixture in Spanish homes and threatens your finances: “They are not easily detected”

The personal finance expert recently said Pedro Becerro in an interview with The Economic Information of 20 minutes that “saving does not depend on income, but on habits.” And there are certain habits that come from fashions or new forms of leisure consumption that are beginning to establish themselves in our lives and that can threaten to upset the balance of our finances.

In the case of subscriptions to audiovisual platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+which “have consolidated themselves as a fixed and recurring expense in the home economy“This is revealed by the report ‘Spending on audiovisual platforms in homes. Habits and new consumer trends in Spain and Mexico’, prepared by EAE Business School, belonging to the higher education network Planeta Formación y Universidades.

These disbursements would be part of the so-called vampire expensesconsidered due to their greater amount as the older brothers of the so-called ant expensesthose that you do repeatedly and spontaneously in small quantities, such as buying a bag of chips, a coffee or a bottle of water.

“They are those expenses that, despite being fixed, cannot be easily detected because they are not considered in the budget and they have an even greater impact compared to the other two – ant expenses and ghost expenses,” he explains. BBVA on his blog specialized in savings. “If they are constant they can suck money until your wallet is lifeless, well “they take 30% of the monthly income”warns the Condusef (National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Users of Financial Services in Mexico) about vampire expenses.

The study confirms that two out of every three Spanish households pay at least one subscription to a platform and that average annual expense already is located in 286 euros per household in Spain, although we do include other entertainment options on-linesuch as music or video games, the bill can skyrocket to 400 euros per year per family. The research indicates that homes with children spend 25% more on these audiovisual contents than in homes where there are no children.

“The living room has become a cinema, video club and video game room at the same time. The platforms of streamingsuch as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and many others have gone from being a technological luxury to a fixed element in the family budget such as water, electricity or internet“he states Hector Premudaauthor of the study and professor at EAE Business School. “He streaming has become a structural part of the family budget, which shows that the industry must offer personalized experiences and thus provide real value to the consumer,” says the EAE Business School expert.

Rate increase well above inflation

On the other hand, the EAE Business School report also reveals that the expansion of audiovisual platforms in recent years has been accompanied by an increase in rates, that have grown a 81.7% between 2015 and 2025.

“This figure is well above the 18.5% of accumulated general inflation, which reveals that, in Spain, the streaming It has become more than four times more expensive than the cost of living. This situation, logically, has generated, discomfort and various saving methods by userssuch as account sharing,” highlights the business school document.

Furthermore, according to this study, the explosion of audiovisual offers has led many households to have several subscriptions simultaneously. “It is significant that the 36% have at least two services and 15% opt for 3 or more subscriptions. “This expansion among Spanish families means that the average user in our country is subscribed to more than two platforms (specifically 2.7).”

However, the business school research also confirms what is called the ‘subscriber fatigue’a type of syndrome that causes people to feel overwhelmed or dissatisfied due to the accumulation of multiple subscription services.

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