Right now I pay for none of it: free password manager, free mail, no VPN, no custom domain. I am willing to spend around 120 a year total if it buys something real, and I would rather pay for one thing properly than four things badly. What does your actual annual total look like line by line, and which single line would you keep if you had to drop the rest?
Mine, itemised, in round numbers. Domain about 12 a year at a registrar that does not upsell privacy protection as an extra. Paid mail on that domain sits in the four to five a month band on an annual plan for the mainstream privacy focused providers, so call it 55. Password manager, ten a year for the paid tier of the open source one, which I pay mostly to support it rather than because I need the features. VPN is the expensive line, the flat rate providers are around five a month with no discount for committing, so 60 a year if you run it all year. That totals roughly 137, and the line I would keep if forced to one is the domain plus mail, because it is the only one that changes what happens when a provider disappears.
Worth saying the flat monthly VPN pricing is deliberate on some providers, they do not do multi year discounts specifically so you are never locked to them.
The domain being the thing that survives a provider dying is an angle I had not considered at all. That reorders my list.
Pay monthly for the first three months of anything. The annual discount is not worth being locked into a provider you have not lived with.
The free tiers worth knowing about, since your budget matters: the main open source password manager's free tier syncs across unlimited devices and is genuinely complete for one person, and mainstream privacy focused mail providers have free tiers that are fine until you want your own domain. That means your 120 can go almost entirely into the domain and mail line, which is where I would put it.
I signed up for five paid services in one weekend and by month three I was using two of them. About 180 wasted, and worse, I had my mail split across two providers for a while, which caused a genuinely painful mess when I tried to consolidate. Add one thing per month and let each become a habit before the next.
@airgap_amir · 4mo ago · 2 replies
I would spend it in a different order than most people. Your own domain and mail on it first, because that decouples your identity from any one company. Password manager second, and honestly the free tier of the good ones is enough for one person. VPN last, and only if you have a reason you can articulate, because for most people at home it is moving trust from an internet provider to a VPN company rather than removing it. That order means your first 70 does almost all the work.
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@budget_bruno · 4mo ago
Agreed on the order, though I would put the password manager first for anyone who is currently reusing passwords, because that is a live wound rather than a design improvement.
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