Isn’t reading japanese the best kind of self quizzing? 
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Well I’ve been busy with real life and didn’t pass levels as fast as I could. So right now I’ve paid for around 26 months. I will probably pay more than what lifetime costs in the end due to burning everything and then going through everything I learned to resurrect. So it depends on your plans on how fast you want to go through wanikani and if you will be resurrecting burned items or resetting level. I might go lifetime as well at some point
I’m half way into my second year. For me to burn everything, paying for lifetime or paying yearly will cost the same thing.
I’m glad I didn’t get lifetime because I’m starting to burn out and I want to move on to other things like light novels instead of spending all my time online. I might just stop at level 50 and burn everything so I save a year’s worth of subscription. Things are just piling up without motivation.
There’s no need for me to go back levels because I’ve taken it slow (one review session a day, about 15 days average a level) and I’ve learned enough for my initial purpose of learning Japanese.
Do you think you can really commit 20-30 minutes a day for the next two years?
For me, it was worth getting the lifetime subscription when they had a winter sale. I made a lot of mistakes the first time I tried this and was at level 40-something before I stopped studying for a couple years (music took over my life). A lot less kanji and vocab stuck than I would’ve liked because I had abused scripts more than I should have (user error - some people do really well with scripts, but I don’t). I reset to level 15 and am finding things are sticking better this time around. I am going the slower, script-free route and living with my typos.
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Writing Japanese is more of a self quizzing. 
haha
tbh, they are just different aspects.
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Are you using the regular yearly price or discounted tofugu subscription?
If we were to bet on why the lifetime price equals 3 years, i’d say it’s mostly because the average user takes more than 3 years.
Otherwise threads like this one would uncover Tofugus dark secrets of over prized lifetime memberships. 
And tofugu just doesn’t strike me as the company that rips people off. (at least not on purpose 
)
But you may be faster than average and I think that’s what you should figure out. Which is why I am surprised that no one asks for your current Japanese skills. It makes a big difference whether you are a beginner or already familiar with the language and know a lot of vocab but have yet to learn kanji. Are you a student with a lot of free time or do you have a job and a family to take care of? When was the last time you learned something new? Is it easy for you to learn new things?
(rhetorical questions ;-))
It can also be quite overwhelming to do wanikani every single day. Going fast doesn’t allow much laziness. Or many weekends off.
There is also the annual “Learn Japanese” sale which gives you 33% off the lifetime membership (meaning 100$ cheaper) around christmas/new year. Assuming you’d pay for the annual plan now, you’d get back half of it (because christmas is in almost exactly six months) in case you buy the lifetime then.
100$ for the annual now
+199$ for the discounted lifetime
-50$ for unused months of the annual plan
249$ total, so still cheaper than buying lifetime now. (or even cheaper if you have discounted monthly/annual)
Or use monthly until the discount for a total of 259$
EDIT: please don’t hate me if they don’t have the 33% percent discount this year 
First things first, you are “young” as far as WK goes (and perhaps as far as Japanese learning goes in general) and even after the free levels, it’s not easy to extrapolate how you will feel. Tbh I didn’t understand what the trip had been like or how it would continue to go until around level 7. So one option is to buy 1 or 2 months and decide later (can probably get a prorate or something).
On one hand, lifetime means you can take things at a more leisurely pace and that could help you to not burn out. On the other hand, that lack of urgency can also help you just be lazy. “Oh, I have lifetime, no rush, I’ll do those lessons later…”
And on the flipside, yearly means that you are continuously pushed to keep up with your lessons, but at the cost of burning out easier or quicker.
Do you think you’ll take advantage of having all the time in the world with the lifetime option? Do you think you can keep up the pace of yearly and not burn out?
As for myself, keeping with my current pace (about 7.5 days per level), I’ll be somewhere in the 50s at my first year mark. At that point, I will likely either just be satisfied and stop, or maybe buy an extra month or two to finish up. It’s unlikely I’ll add a whole extra year just to burn things - at that point, one should be “burning” through the constant reading of mid to high tier material.
As someone who failed to finish in two years, I would recommend getting the yearly/lifetime subscriptions. It’s possible to finish in two years, but you DO have to be diligent. I mean, you will get to a point where you will have to do 100+ reviews EVERY DAY, not including lessons. It does get time-consuming and stressful, especially if you have other crap going on in your life and you aren’t a student with buckets of time to devote to studying.
That said, 3 years is more than enough time for MOST people who are serious about learning kanji. I will definitely be finished by the end of next year.
I know I’m not 40-60 yet. (HAHAHAHA- get back to me before Xmas and we’ll see where I’m at then.) I still want to weigh in, though.
Buying a subscription, there are a few things you have to consider (I assume you’re satisfied with WK here; if you’re not, there’s really no point to be asking that question…):
-$$$ (Are you willing to pay $10 every month? $100 every year? $300 once?)
-Interest in Japanese (Will Japanese play a key role in your future, or is it just a hobby? ← This is the most important one, in my opinion. If it’s just a hobby, there is a higher chance of you getting burned out. However, if it will play a key role in your life- maybe doing business in Japan or whatnot- then you are more than likely to continue on.)
-Life quality (Is your life stable right now? Excluding unexpected circumstances, will it stay in the state it is in right now? ← This is also important. If your life is very hectic, it would be hard to focus on your studies, and you may need to save money for more important things, such as bills or rent.)
This was my mindset (described in the same three points presented just now) when buying my subscription:
-$$$: I was more willing to pay $10 a month (even though I do have enough for a yearly, I don’t earn very much per week to be able to make up for the dent a yearly would make)
-Interest in JP: I want to move to Japan. I want to live there, raise a family there, etc. I’m currently at the stage of life where a ton can happen in less than 10 years. Hell, I will most likely be in Japan in 10 years. So yes, Japanese is crucial to my future.
-Life quality: My life is stable right now. I am able to do reviews every day or every other day and am able to earn enough money to be able to pay my WK subscription at the end of every month.
This is just my opinion on things. 
Yes indeed, the reviews stack up. 100 sounds so nice o_o Daily ~200 reviews on WK (400 I guess if you count meaning+reading separately), ~150 on KW, and then usually ~30 on other SRS apps like Memrise/Clozemaster. I never sleep (or go for more than a few hours) without my review queue being at 0. I get a queasy feeling when I read people who joke about their 300-1000 review pile O_O .
That pile corresponds to 20 lessons per day. On the lower end of how many you need to do in order to level up at max pace and not be more than half a level behind in vocab.
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