When people read the title of this article, they usually imagine that I’m making money by selling AI products, building AI agents, or launching another SaaS. That’s not actually what happened. The $180 comes from something much simpler: I stopped paying for a subscription I no longer needed. It isn’t additional revenue in the traditional sense, but from a personal finance perspective, keeping an extra $180 every month feels very similar to earning it.
I think we often focus too much on finding new ways to increase our income while ignoring the money quietly leaving our bank account every month. AI subscriptions have become one of those recurring expenses for many developers, and because they genuinely improve our productivity, it’s easy to assume we should always be paying for the biggest plan available.
When More Started Feeling Necessary
A few months ago, I was subscribed to Anthropic’s $200 Max plan. Looking back, I don’t regret that decision because it made perfect sense at the time. I was using Claude Code almost every day to build Laravel applications, maintain WordPress plugins, review pull requests, and prototype new ideas. AI had become an essential part of my workflow, so paying more to remove usage limits felt like a worthwhile investment.
It also wasn’t my first upgrade. Like many developers, I started with the standard Pro subscription. As my projects became larger and my prompts became more complex, I upgraded to the 5× plan because I kept running into usage limits. Eventually, the $200 Max plan seemed like the obvious next step. If AI was helping me save hours every week, paying for the highest tier didn’t feel unreasonable.
For several months, I barely thought about the subscription. It renewed automatically, and I continued working as usual. Then one day, I realized something interesting. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually reached the Max plan’s limits. I was paying for capacity that I simply wasn’t using anymore.
Looking at My Workflow Instead of the Price
That realization made me ask myself a simple question: If I were subscribing today for the first time, would I still choose the $200 plan?
The answer was surprisingly easy.
No.
Not because Claude had become worse, and certainly not because I had stopped using AI. My workflow had simply changed. The subscription that once matched my needs no longer reflected how I actually worked.
Instead of renewing it without thinking, I decided to experiment. Around the same time, ChatGPT introduced Codex, so I switched to the $20 ChatGPT Pro plan and gave it a proper trial. For about a month, I used it for exactly the same work I had previously done with Claude Code: writing Laravel code, debugging WordPress plugins, reviewing pull requests, generating documentation, and exploring new ideas.
To my surprise, it fit my workflow remarkably well. In some situations, I even preferred it. That doesn’t mean ChatGPT is better than Claude, or that everyone should cancel their Anthropic subscription. Both are excellent products. What I learned is that the most expensive tool isn’t automatically the best one. The right tool is the one that matches the way you actually work.
Sometimes the Limit Is Actually Helpful
One thing I expected to dislike was the usage limit. I assumed it would interrupt my productivity and slow me down. Instead, something unexpected happened.
After spending five or six hours writing code with AI, reaching the limit often became a reminder that I’d been sitting in front of my monitor for far too long. Rather than trying to find another workaround, I’d simply close my laptop, go outside, and head out for a run.
Running has become part of my daily routine, and I’ve noticed that many of my best ideas don’t appear while I’m staring at VS Code. They arrive while I’m away from the keyboard. By the time I return home, the problem that felt complicated a couple of hours earlier often has a surprisingly simple solution.
Ironically, the usage limit sometimes encourages a healthier workflow than unlimited access ever did.
The Best Investment Isn’t Always the Most Expensive One
When I canceled the $200 subscription, I didn’t feel like I had lost something valuable. Instead, I felt like I had given myself an immediate $180 monthly raise. That’s more than $2,000 a year without finding another client, increasing my hourly rate, or launching a new side project.
More importantly, this experience changed the way I think about AI subscriptions. The AI landscape evolves incredibly quickly. New models appear every few months, pricing changes, and our workflows evolve alongside them. The subscription that made perfect sense six months ago might not be the one that serves you best today.
So, do I really earn $180 every month because of AI?
Not directly.
AI didn’t send me a paycheck. It simply helped me realize that I was paying for something I no longer needed. By choosing a subscription that better matched my actual workflow, I kept an extra $180 in my pocket every month.
Sometimes the smartest financial decision isn’t buying another AI tool. It’s taking a step back, reviewing the tools you already pay for, and asking yourself one simple question:
“If I were starting today, would I still choose this?”
For me, that question was worth $180 every single month.