Annual membership or lifetime?

WaniKani
#28

Hi! Glad to know there’s a fellow newbie here. You make a good point. No matter what, we all have real life and it does get in the way regardless of our best intentions, which is why I’m on the fence. If I knew I’d be able to devote myself I’m sure I could smash through WK in under 2 years, but I’m not foolish enough to imagine life isn’t going to get hectic at some point in the coming years (even if it hopefully won’t be quite the doozy 2020 was).

How do you add people to scripts. I keep seeing things about scripts but can’t find anything that explains them in a way I understand (computers are not my forte). Is it something I need to be a premium member to have access to? It would be great if we could support each other in our respective journeys.

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#29

That’s a good point about exchange rates. I’m British so I’m not sure we’re doing much better these days, but life is unpredictable. I’ll look into it, but it might be worth just splurging now and saving myself long term given how things seem to keep going from bad to worse these days. Thanks and good luck for 2021!

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#30

Covid has made this a hard decision, I agree. For me Japanese is a life long thing. I lived there for 9 years, I have friends there, I often visit and may one day live there again. I have failed to learn other languages as they were just a hobby for me and I doubt I’d spend as much on French or Spanish as those languages aren’t currently part of my life. Knowing this isn’t just a hobby does make me more willing to spend money on learning.

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#31

Well… yes. I don’t use it in place of Jisho, I use it to look up things I learned on WK.

#32

Thank you for the advice! What are the grease monkey scripts? I keep seeing mentions of scripts but am confused about how they can be used. Could you explain more or link a good thread for clueless people please?

#33

Sure, it’s all here: The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps

After you have figured out how to install scripts (there’s a helpful link for that right in the beginning of the thread and feel free to ask if there are any problems), you can just try them out one by one based on what seems useful and see how you like them.

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#34

You’ll still deal with reviews after hitting level 60. It really boils down to if you can and want to spend (or rather invest) that money at the moment.

I went with annual subs first as I had a discount on them and now I could spend the money on lifetime so I bit.

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#35

Thank you! I did look, but I couldn’t find my API key and just got confused so thought it might be a membership only thing. I’ll read through this guide.

#36

Yeah, no worries, everyone can use them.

API keys are under Settings – API tokens. Just click on the icon thingy at the upper right corner on the main WK page.

#37

Yeah, I looked there and it just says ‘generate new token’ but I don’t understand what to do next. :see_no_evil: :flushed:

#38

Just check the boxes based on what you want to allow the apps/scripts to do and click on ‘generate’. You can just use the default read-only token for most scripts (if they need one at all) and if a script needs more access, it usually says so in its description, so make sure to read the whole introduction in the thread it’s posted in.

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#39

Thank you for your input :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I truly appreciate it

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#40

Funny, for me it’s the exact opposite. I know I don’t have to rush to reach the top, so I’m much more relaxed, which, contrary to what you could think, is making me more motivated to learn. Learning a language is a marathon, not sprint, and I find that for me it’s better to approach it on chill.

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#41

I was on monthly for over a year. I then went with annual six months ago and got lifetime this month with the discount and the proration for the remainder of my annual sub.

I have about 10 levels left and I started WK in Feb of 2019. I would say that 2 years to get to 60 is about a decent pace. The absolute fastest is about 1 year but that doesn’t count the 6 month tail of burns. 3 years would probably be the most comfortable pace with solid progress but less of a daily time commitment.

In my case, getting lifetime from the beginning probably would have saved me an additional $100+, but like many have said, I went monthly since I was unsure whether I could stick with it long term.

After the first year was when I started planning to get lifetime so it’s definitely a question you have to ask yourself.

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#42

That’s good to know! Thank you. I think for me, I already know Japanese is something I’ll study and work at my whole life as I’ve already got such strong connections to the country. It was more a question of whether it would take me over 2 years to complete WK as with the current sale on a lifetime subscription would be worth it if it does.

It seems like even though 1 year is possible, it’s not the norm and doesn’t allow for life interfering with reviews, and it doesn’t make sense to get an annual if I end up getting lifetime anyway or buying annual more than twice, so I think I’ll just get lifetime now.

Thanks for the advice everyone! It was a big help.

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#43

I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with WK since I’m obsessed enough that I’ve been zeroing my reviews literally every single day for 95 days straight, lmao. After much pondering though, I decided I’d just pay monthly since $200 felt like a lot at once. …Then I got an unexpected holiday bonus and took it as a sign, lol. Lifetime :airplane: here I come.

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#44

I bought the annual membership hitting level 04, and planned to get to level 60 in under a year. I did it, in 2018. The idea was to seize the most of the website because I wasn’t sure that I’d have the money to pay for another suscription.

I recently (yesterday…) learned that when you get to level 60, WK team offers you to get the lifetime suscription for I believe 60USD, which was my case.

By this I’m not explicitly recommending you to go full speed, but since you say that you live in Japan, you most likely will breeze through the first levels, so maybe buying the annual suscription and get the level 60 discount would be adequate for you. Though I think it’s completely worth it to pay for the lifetime suscription if you have the money right now

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#45

I really appreciate the information you shared. I didn’t know anything about those resources, but they’re especially helpful to me, particularly the audio track that supports reading on watanoc! I’m pretty sure I will end up purchasing the lifetime subscription. I’ve just been weighing the pros and cons.

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#46

Everybody who regretted buying a subscription (lifetime or otherwise) will have left the forums and are not here to answer any more.

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#47

Yeah, that’s a fair point. At the moment my problem is more that I know too many readings, like I know 中 can be read as ちゅう (Onyomi) or なか、うち as Kunyomi, but when I put ちゅう or うち instead of なか it gets marked wrong, which is frustrating.

Same with 土, I know it as Earth, but it gets marked wrong if I don’t write dirt for the radical or if I write と instead of つち.

Otherwise there’s nothing so far that is new to me so it’s pretty easy to stay on top of things right now, but I’m not expecting that to remain the case as I progress.

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