{"course":{"slug":"choosing-your-tools","title":"Choosing and Using the Tools","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/choosing-your-tools","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"budget-that-holds","title":"A budget that actually holds","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/choosing-your-tools/budget-that-holds","position":38,"of":76,"minutes":7,"answer":"Write down current spend, set an enforced hard cap with alerts on every pay-as-you-go account, and review every subscription quarterly against what you actually used rather than what you might use.","keyIdea":"Write down current spend, set an enforced hard cap with alerts on every pay-as-you-go account, and review every subscription quarterly against what you actually used rather than what you might use."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Three numbers, written down\n\nA budget in your head is not a budget. Write three numbers where you will see them:\n\n1. **What you spend now, monthly, across everything.** Include the subscription you forgot.\n2. **The hard cap on every pay-as-you-go account**, set in the provider's console.\n3. **The date you review it.**\n\nThat is the whole system. It is unglamorous and it works, and its main virtue is that it turns an open-ended commitment into a bounded one.\n\n## Making the cap real\n\nA cap in a provider console is enforced by them, which is what makes it different from an intention. Set it below what you can comfortably pay, not at it: the point is that the worst case is annoying rather than damaging.\n\nSet the alert thresholds too, usually at 50% and 80%. An email at 50% on the fourth of the month tells you something is wrong while it is still cheap to find out.\n\nWhere a provider offers prepaid credit instead of invoicing, prefer it. Running out is the safest possible failure: the work stops, nothing is owed, and you decide whether to add more.\n\n## The four things that break budgets\n\n**A loop.** Something ran more times than intended. This is by far the most common cause of a surprising bill and it is why you test on ten items, print the running total, and only then run the rest.\n\n**A key someone else is using.** Covered in module three. Check the usage dashboard when spend does not match your memory of what you did; a pattern of requests at three in the morning is a leaked key, not a mistake.\n\n**Thinking mode left on by default.** Ten times the token cost for tasks that did not need it.\n\n**Subscriptions that accumulated.** Three assistants, a coding tool, an image service, a transcription service. Each one was reasonable when you added it. Together they are more than most people would knowingly agree to spend, which is exactly why the quarterly review exists.\n\n## The quarterly review\n\nTwenty minutes, four times a year. Open every billing page and ask two questions per item:\n\n- **Did I use this last month?** Not *might I*: did I.\n- **What would happen if I cancelled it today?**\n\nCancel anything where the answers are \"no\" and \"nothing\". Everything here restarts in two minutes and your history generally survives. There is no penalty for pausing and no relationship to protect.\n\nWhile you are there, check whether the price has changed. Prices in this field move in both directions, and providers are not obliged to make an increase prominent.\n\n## When the free tier is the right final answer\n\nThis module has covered the arithmetic of paying. It should end by saying plainly that for a large number of readers, the correct outcome of that arithmetic is to pay nothing.\n\nIf you use an assistant a few times a week, for drafting, rewriting, explaining and ordinary questions, the free tiers of two products cover it completely. You will hit a cap occasionally, you will switch to the other one, and you will lose nothing that matters. Adding a local model for confidential work costs nothing but disk space.\n\nThat is not a compromise position or a starter arrangement. It is the right answer for that pattern of use, and the fact that everyone in this industry has an interest in telling you otherwise is a reason to be more confident about it rather than less.\n\n## After a bill you did not expect\n\nIt happens, and the response is the same each time. Open the usage dashboard and sort by day, then by model. The cause is nearly always visible within a minute: a spike on one date, a model you did not mean to use, or steady traffic at hours you were asleep.\n\nThen do three things in order. Revoke the key, because it costs nothing and rules out the worst explanation. Lower the cap, so the same mistake cannot repeat while you work out what happened. And if the charge was a provider error or an obvious runaway on a new account, ask support: several providers do issue credits in those cases, and asking politely once is free.\n\n## The one-line version\n\nCap what can run away, review what accumulates, and be honest twice a year about what you actually used. Three numbers and a date will keep you inside your budget more reliably than any amount of careful reading about which plan offers the best value."},"check":{"question":"Why is prepaid credit generally a safer arrangement than invoiced pay-as-you-go with a hard cap set in the console?","options":[{"text":"Running out stops the work and leaves nothing owed; a cap acts after the spending has happened.","correct":true},{"text":"Caps are advisory on most providers and only trigger an email rather than stopping requests.","correct":false,"tempting":"Understates enforced caps, which do stop service on major providers rather than merely warning."},{"text":"Prepaid credit is usually offered at a discount, so the same work costs less than it would when invoiced.","correct":false,"tempting":"Claims a price advantage that does not generally exist; prepaid and invoiced use are billed at the same per-token rates."},{"text":"Prepaid accounts are not linked to a payment card, so a leaked key cannot be used to make further purchases.","correct":false,"tempting":"Draws the wrong boundary: a leaked key can spend whatever credit is loaded, and the balance is the limit rather than the card."}]},"prev":{"slug":"paying-from-anywhere","title":"Paying for it from where you live","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/choosing-your-tools/paying-from-anywhere"},"next":{"slug":"open-models","title":"The open models","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/choosing-your-tools/open-models"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'A budget that actually holds', in Choosing and Using the Tools. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/choosing-your-tools/budget-that-holds (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"A budget that actually holds","courseTitle":"Choosing and Using the Tools","module":{"index":4,"slug":"what-it-costs","title":"What it actually costs"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Write down current spend, set an enforced hard cap with alerts on every pay-as-you-go account, and review every subscription quarterly against what you actually used rather than what you might use.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"three-numbers-written-down","runs":[{"text":"Three numbers, written down"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A budget in your head is not a budget. Write three numbers where you will see them:"}]},{"t":"ol","start":1,"items":[[{"text":"What you spend now, monthly, across everything.","b":true},{"text":" Include the subscription you forgot."}],[{"text":"The hard cap on every pay-as-you-go account","b":true},{"text":", set in the provider’s console."}],[{"text":"The date you review it.","b":true}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"That is the whole system. It is unglamorous and it works, and its main virtue is that it turns an open-ended commitment into a bounded one."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"making-the-cap-real","runs":[{"text":"Making the cap real"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A cap in a provider console is enforced by them, which is what makes it different from an intention. Set it below what you can comfortably pay, not at it: the point is that the worst case is annoying rather than damaging."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Set the alert thresholds too, usually at 50% and 80%. An email at 50% on the fourth of the month tells you something is wrong while it is still cheap to find out."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Where a provider offers prepaid credit instead of invoicing, prefer it. Running out is the safest possible failure: the work stops, nothing is owed, and you decide whether to add more."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-four-things-that-break-budgets","runs":[{"text":"The four things that break budgets"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A loop.","b":true},{"text":" Something ran more times than intended. This is by far the most common cause of a surprising bill and it is why you test on ten items, print the running total, and only then run the rest."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A key someone else is using.","b":true},{"text":" Covered in module three. Check the usage dashboard when spend does not match your memory of what you did; a pattern of requests at three in the morning is a leaked key, not a mistake."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Thinking mode left on by default.","b":true},{"text":" Ten times the token cost for tasks that did not need it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Subscriptions that accumulated.","b":true},{"text":" Three assistants, a coding tool, an image service, a transcription service. Each one was reasonable when you added it. Together they are more than most people would knowingly agree to spend, which is exactly why the quarterly review exists."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-quarterly-review","runs":[{"text":"The quarterly review"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Twenty minutes, four times a year. Open every billing page and ask two questions per item:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Did I use this last month?","b":true},{"text":" Not "},{"text":"might I","i":true},{"text":": did I."}],[{"text":"What would happen if I cancelled it today?","b":true}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Cancel anything where the answers are “no” and “nothing”. Everything here restarts in two minutes and your history generally survives. There is no penalty for pausing and no relationship to protect."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"While you are there, check whether the price has changed. Prices in this field move in both directions, and providers are not obliged to make an increase prominent."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"when-the-free-tier-is-the-right-final-answer","runs":[{"text":"When the free tier is the right final answer"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This module has covered the arithmetic of paying. It should end by saying plainly that for a large number of readers, the correct outcome of that arithmetic is to pay nothing."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If you use an assistant a few times a week, for drafting, rewriting, explaining and ordinary questions, the free tiers of two products cover it completely. You will hit a cap occasionally, you will switch to the other one, and you will lose nothing that matters. Adding a local model for confidential work costs nothing but disk space."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"That is not a compromise position or a starter arrangement. It is the right answer for that pattern of use, and the fact that everyone in this industry has an interest in telling you otherwise is a reason to be more confident about it rather than less."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"after-a-bill-you-did-not-expect","runs":[{"text":"After a bill you did not expect"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"It happens, and the response is the same each time. Open the usage dashboard and sort by day, then by model. The cause is nearly always visible within a minute: a spike on one date, a model you did not mean to use, or steady traffic at hours you were asleep."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Then do three things in order. Revoke the key, because it costs nothing and rules out the worst explanation. Lower the cap, so the same mistake cannot repeat while you work out what happened. And if the charge was a provider error or an obvious runaway on a new account, ask support: several providers do issue credits in those cases, and asking politely once is free."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-one-line-version","runs":[{"text":"The one-line version"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Cap what can run away, review what accumulates, and be honest twice a year about what you actually used. Three numbers and a date will keep you inside your budget more reliably than any amount of careful reading about which plan offers the best value."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"Why is prepaid credit generally a safer arrangement than invoiced pay-as-you-go with a hard cap set in the console?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"Running out stops the work and leaves nothing owed; a cap acts after the spending has happened."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Caps are advisory on most providers and only trigger an email rather than stopping requests."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Understates enforced caps, which do stop service on major providers rather than merely warning."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Prepaid credit is usually offered at a discount, so the same work costs less than it would when invoiced."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Claims a price advantage that does not generally exist; prepaid and invoiced use are billed at the same per-token rates."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Prepaid accounts are not linked to a payment card, so a leaked key cannot be used to make further purchases."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Draws the wrong boundary: a leaked key can spend whatever credit is loaded, and the balance is the limit rather than the card."}]}],"order":[1,0,3,2],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"paying-from-anywhere","title":"Paying for it from where you live","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"open-models","title":"The open models","minutes":8}}}