I’m worried that I’m not going to use WK after purchasing a premium subscription. It’s a great service and it’s been working very well, but I’m just thinking that if I don’t use it enough (let’s say my school workload gets heavier or something) then I would be wasting my parents’ money.
Should I just go ahead and do it?
Maybe you should wait for Christmas discount and buy lifetime subscription - that way even if you’re distracted, you wouldn’t be wasting money… I mean, you’d always be able to return to your studies when things become easier without having to make additional payment…
If you get the lifetime subscription, it shouldn’t be that big a deal if life gets in the way. If you plan to pay monthly or yearly, it would be ideal to commit to WK on a daily basis. That’s something you have to figure out for yourself since you better know what’s in store for you in the coming months.
As someone who has wasted my parents’ money a lot on educational materials and still continue to do the same with my own paychecks… this is something you’d need to figure out for yourself without any of us possibly enabling you :3 Good luck with your decision!
A biased opinion:
I started nearly a year ago, then stopped over the summer for a busy work schedule.
But here I am back again, and it has sure been worth it! 
I’m going to Japan in early January, and I want to have at least some kanji knowledge to take with me.
So that’s not really an option…
You can just pay monthly now and then do the lifetime then. The monthly is not much, many people pay for gym memberships or tv services they dont use that cost more lol
Well I work full time, some students and such may not have the budget.
I did a yearly subscription and I’m glad I did. Having paid for a certain period of time gives me motivation to move quickly.
Having said that, you do have to judge whether you have, say, an hour a day to spend on this. You don’t need to spend that much time as long as you’re willing to go slower. But it’s a good idea to spend at least a little time every day on this if you want to feel like you’re progressing.
What about going yearly and see how things go? You can always upgrade to lifetime (since WK checks the subscription time you have yet to use and substracts that on the price). Imagine that you go yearly and after 6 months you decide to upgrade to lifetime. Half the cost of the yearly will be removed from the lifetime sub.
So basically, what I recommend you to do is to go for yearly, wait for the Christmas promotion (which is not 100% guaranteed to happen, but always does) and then upgrade to lifetime. This way you’ll get the Christmas discount, the yearly sub won’t go to waste (as lifetime gets even cheaper) and you don’t stop learning kanji.
Just my honest suggestion though. Like I said, the Christmas promo is not a guarantee to happen, BUT the WK team always reveals it around December.
personally, i’m waiting for a lifetime discount, paying monthly till it’s there. i wanna stick around till all is burned.
Can’t answer the “should I do it” question, but I think I’d feel more “wasting someone else’s money” pressure if I was on a monthly or yearly subscription and then had to take a break. With a lifetime, yeah, maybe you won’t use it every day, but that’s ok, it’s always there. I’m just waiting to see if there’s a discount at the holidays, which everyone says is not unheard of.
I am a parent myself (7 years old).
I would be happy and so willing to pay for a few months of subscription if my son wants to learn japanese. You wrote you go to Japan, so it’s doulbe worth it.
WK is not a magic bullet. I am still figuring out if this is the right thing to do or not (Level 9 currently).
However, it’s worth to try at least and if its not working for you, you’ll need to stop.
The best thing you can do is to ask your parents for advise. Tell them you think this is a valuable tool for your studies and you’d like to try. However, you might to stop with it when school is giving you headache. All halfway sane parents would say you are great kid to take care of the familys money and giving your trip, I would certainly pay for the tool.
In your case, i would not yet bother with lifetime subscriptions yet. These are for people who already decided this is the right tool (giving their life circumstances). If you are not so sure, you tell your parents exactly that: you don’t know yet and you would like to give it a try.
To sum up: talk to the people who invest in you. Explain pro and cons and listen. In the end you’ll have their advise and you’ll feel if this is a good advise or not.
Cheers,
Christian
Wanikani lifetime subscription was one of the most useful purchases in my life. And yes, I bought it with my parents money sigh
So yeah definitely. If you think about the value of WK and what it allows in the long-term of your Japanese learning journey, buying lifetime at any point is still worth the money.
Sometimes we forget that there are still thousands of us at a classroom that think kanji is the devil 
Maybe keep doing what you’re doing while school starts and evaluate whether it fits in with your schedule. If that requires buying a subscription, you can write a contract with you parents that asks them to pay the subscription for a certain period of time while you evaluate it, (and you agree to do something for them in return.) That way they aren’t wasting money and can stop payment according to the terms you agreed to, and you have a motive to try and fit WK into your school/life balance.
If you can fit it in, you may consider renegotiating for the lifetime subscription when it goes on sale, so won’t need re-up the contract every period.
When I started, I was unsure how long it would take, the lifetime subscription seemed somewhat expensive.
Oh, man. I’ve been here for 4 years. Life gets in the way… I restarted 3 times. I’m so happy I chose the lifetime subscription!
As @trunklayer says, there should be a discount around Christmas. Use it!
That entirely depends on your financial situation and your life situation in general. For those with a job and a family lifetime would be better since they can afford it but can’t afford spending as much time on WaniKani as others. Personally I may possibly keep reviewing after level 60 (although that’s still a big maybe) but I’m not re-subscribing since there are many other resources which I’ll get a lot more out of the money I’ll put into them.
I’m talking about the big picture of learning a language. The benefits you get from language learning are unbelievably disproportionate to its cost, compared to other stuff people spend their €$£円 on
Same thing, I was pondering to subscribe and thinking just the same as you OP, lifetime is just too much money and I simply don’t like monthly payments, buying the yearly subscription was the best deal for me, but if they can afford to pay you a lifetime subscription it’ll be wonderful
My motivation waxes and wanes (but it always does return!) so ultimately I think Lifetime would be best for me, but I’m doing yearly while I wait for the incredibly likely christmas/end of the year discount.
Note: If any mods have issues with me stating this pocket change making method, just delete it. >>;
If you’re online a lot and you have unlimited data, there are ways to make the $9/month. Earnably.com is one of many sites that lets you watch videos with ads in between and you get paid for it. I just have it going off to the side while I do wanikani and other things. I get about $20/month to either paypal or visa prepaid cards which could be used to pay for a wanikani monthly subscription or a year if you really save up (and any leftover balance can be transferred to an amazon.com balance so nothing is wasted!).
