I literally spent ten minutes last month staring at a pricing page.

Left: 20$ a month. Right: two hundred for the year.

The math is simple. You pay up front, get two months free and forty bucks saved. Your mind instantly goes, Of course paying monthly is just money down the toilet. I pressed the big yearly button, entered my card data, walked away feeling like I got a steal.

The rug was pulled out from under me three months later.

A new startup has unveiled a model that made my current setup seem old news. It was quicker, it had more intelligence, and then it was being used by everyone.

I wanted to switch. Obviously.

But I was stuck. That left me with just nine months on my contract.

To get the better model, I had to pay twice. Otherwise I had to continue using the slow, old system whilst everyone else moved on.

That forty dollar discount became a nine month penalty.

We use outmoded purchasing behaviours for tech that changes every 90 days. If you purchase a gym membership, the treadmill does not change. The game completely changes overnight, though, with AI.

Avoiding forty bucks on the front end ended up costing me nine months of being stuck in. In a rapidly changing domain, the only product worth paying for is the ability to change your mind.

We trade the freedom to choose tomorrow for a small discount today.