Burning Money
from 11/20/2024, by uni — 11m read
A couple of weeks ago, I created a spreadsheet to organize all the subscription services I'm paying for, suspecting that I was spending more than I realized. After laying it all out, the total wasn't entirely surprising, but it was certainly concerning. Over $1,000.00 a year? That's practically an entire paycheck for me. There must be something I can do to "fix" this, right? Let's take a closer look at where the money is going.
PS D:\website\uniyxnet> & C:/Users/uni/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python313/python.exe d:/website/uniyxnet/src/static/assets/etc/subscriptions.py
Name Monthly Cost Plan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazon Prime $5.75 Annual Student ($69.00)
YouTube Premium $7.99 Monthly Student ($7.99)
Discord Nitro $2.50 Yearly ($29.99)
Robinhood Gold $5.00 Monthly ($5.00)
Real-Debrid Premium $2.82 6 Months ($16.90)
FACEIT/ESEA League $10.00 3 Months ($30.00)
WarmupServer $4.34 6 Months ($26.06)
NYT Games $5.99 Monthly ($5.99)
AppleCare+ $9.99 Monthly ($9.99)
ChatGPT Plus $20.00 Monthly ($20.00)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Monthly Cost: $74.38
Total Yearly Cost: $892.56
This one is non-negotiable for me. Fortunately, I still have Prime Student status, which reduces the annual price from $140.00 to half. I don't purchase from Amazon too often - about one package a month - but the shipping benefits are entirely worth it to me. I've read online, particularly on r/AmazonPrime, about how some people feel that Prime and Amazon have declined in quality. However, I don't share that sentiment. I've noticed the "AliExpress-ification" of their product listings, with sellers from China having garbled names, but I simply avoid purchasing from such vendors. I've never had issues with late shipping or missing packages; perhaps the Amazon warehouses and drivers in my area are more competent.
Additionally, since I'm already integrated with Chase's banking and credit cards, getting the Prime Visa was a no-brainer. Unlimited 5% cashback on all Amazon purchases, with a chance for 6% if you opt for slower shipping? You can easily offset the annual membership fee. Calculated as $69.00 / 0.05 = $1,380.00 yearly spend.
Ever since I switched to an iPhone, I've primarily missed one thing: YouTube ReVanced. This app is a modified YouTube APK that unlocks all premium features and more. I've tried looking for an iOS alternative, such as uYou+, but sideloading anything on iOS has always been a pain. Admittedly, I haven't tried the more recent sideloading developments. In the meantime, I decided to purchase YouTube Premium Student. At $8.00, it's a bit steep, especially since I was initially paying more by purchasing through the app instead of the website. Google certainly has me cornered here, but considering I watch a couple of hours of YouTube every day, it's worth the price in my eyes. No ads, higher bit-rate videos, and background play are all very compelling features.
In recent months, Google has been experimenting with stricter anti-adblock measures on YouTube. There have been countless threads of people complaining about their uBlock Origin not working. I'm not sure how prevalent this is currently, but it seems the push to enforce ads won't stop anytime soon.
Alright, this one got me. Before updating the table above, I was paying $9.99 a month for regular Nitro. It came with some convenient features like 500MB uploads and 1440p streaming, but after a while, I just couldn't justify the cost. Reality sets in when you realize you're spending that kind of money on a messaging platform. After a few days of deliberation, I switched to the Basic Nitro plan, which was $6 cheaper. No more 500MB uploads, no 1440p streaming, and no soundboard. I felt nerfed.
A few years back, I tried BetterDiscord for a short time to experiment with themes. Eventually, I went back to the regular client, but I recently started missing the Nitro features I had given up. Curious about alternatives, I reached out to a close friend, who told me BetterDiscord was on its way out and recommended Vencord as its successor. With nothing to lose, I decided to give it a shot.
The installation process was incredibly straightforward, and the features integrated seamlessly. I'm not big on heavy customization - I just wanted my quality-of-life features back. While exploring the plug-ins tab, I found exactly what I was looking for: "FakeNitro." As the name suggests, it lets you "stream in Nitro quality, send fake emojis/stickers, use client themes, and customize Discord notifications." Everything worked as advertised, and as far as I can tell, there's no risk of getting banned for using it.
To be honest this one was kinda spontaneous. Ever since Robinhood announced their 3% cash back Gold Card, I have been on the waitlist. However that was months ago, and I still haven't gotten off of it. As a last ditch effort I tried to get on their good side by succumbing to their Gold subscription. Unsurprisingly I'm still on the waitlist. However, I decided to keep it for their unlimited 1% boost for every deposit and the 4.75% APY on uninvested cash makes it worth it to me in the end.
If I ever do get off the waitlist for their Gold card, how much would I need to spend to offset the $60.00 annual fee? $60.00 / 0.03 = $2000.00 yearly spend. Not sure if thats worth it to me, but we'll see. Off the top of my head I can think of a few higher cashback credit card setups than just relying on a single card. Plus, Robinhood themselves have already said that the 3% cash back will be lowered in the future.
Non-Negotiable. I wrote about it here. I wish Amazon Pay didn't drop them though.
League fee. I don't mind it, and I understand why it's in place, but you have to admit it's pretty pricey. FACEIT Premium is nice to have, with Super Matches to guarantee you don't have or go against lobbies from hell. Otherwise, I'll just have to suck up the fee.
Although lots of players moved over to pracc, I still prefer WarmupServer. Too lazy to switch over and WarmupServer is cheaper. Paying for a server slot may sound absurd but its nice to play deathmatch and practice my aim on my own terms. I consistently place top 100 each month on the [CHI] Mirage 21 Rifles server, and the fact that I'm paying makes me more motivated to spend time improving.
It's become routine for me to go through Wordle, Connections, and the Mini. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll tackle the main Crossword as well. It's a similar situation to WarmupServer, where the fact that I'm paying makes me want to get the most out of the puzzles. Also, being able to access their archive of puzzles makes the $5.99 fee worth it to me.
When I switched back to iPhone, I was a bit paranoid about breaking it. Although I have no history of cracking my phone's screen, I can recall a few close calls. Apple's insurance is actually quite compelling: unlimited accidental damage protection, same-day service, and express replacement service. It seems they'll take care of most incidents you could find yourself in. Thankfully, I haven't had to use any of their services as I've been lucky enough to avoid damaging my phone. But I know that the day I take myself off their plan, I'll probably shatter it into a million pieces. Maybe when I upgrade to the 17 or 18 Pro, I'll see if bad luck strikes.
The most expensive subscription on this list coming in at $20.00 a month, but funnilly enough its still cheaper than Netflix Premium ($22.99). Without any hesistation I can say that this is 100% non-negotiable. I've been paying since the release of 3.5 Turbo and haven't looked back since. In fact, I'll say that it's even more worth it now with the preview and mini o1 models. I believe it is the strongest tool anyone can use. I use it for programming, studying, and image generation.
The value it provides is unparalleled. For just $20.00 a month, you essentially get to do anything you can imagine, and the more you use it, the more the price feels irrelevant - it's just that good. Sure, there are usage limits, but I've rarely ever hit them.
At one point, I experimented with local LLMs using Ollama. My plan was to write a blog post comparing models and weighing the pros and cons of local setups versus OpenAI's offerings. To be clear, I only have an RTX 4080, so I wasn't running models with a crazy number of parameters, but I was still disappointed with the results. For example, I tested the 8b version of Llama 3.1 hosted with Open WebUI and quickly realized it couldn't hold a candle to any of ChatGPT's models. Yes, this was a low-parameter model in comparison, but the gap in quality was striking. For anyone without a dedicated rig stacked with GPUs, it's simply more cost-effective - and far more practical - to stick with ChatGPT.
Another thing worth mentioning is ChatGPT's API, which offers a pay-as-you-go model instead of the flat $20.00 monthly fee. Personally, though, I prefer the web interface. It's convenient, and I don't have to stress about whether a question is worth the cost of asking.
After going through everything, we're still left with the same problem: there's $1000.00 evaporating from my bank account each year. As seen from a previous post "A Dollar A Day", I show that with dividends I get $365.00+ a year. I've since added more to my investment account and now have a Total Estimated Yearly Dividend: $431.96. I'll write a more in-depth blog post about my updated portfolio in the future; it's more or less the same holdings with more cash invested. Point being, would it be wise to directly offset my subscription costs with dividends? Probably not, and as we learned beforehand, growth takes precedence over dividend return. But it won't stop me from doing it anyway.