Subscription / Advice?

[sunnymarie1993]

Hey friends,

I’ll be leveling to 四 (four) soon! I don’t have much money and this year has been tricky, but I do have a job and desire to learn more kanji on Wanikani. (Cheaper than a gym, my other neglected love…come back abs I miss you )!!

My question is - is there coupons? I heard in the wind there was but that I missed the season. I cannot afford the lifetime right now *bites napkin but was trying to figure out if annual is worth it. I plan to stick around so I’m trying to figure out the best course of action long term (months or annual); at least until another coupon cycle!

[Haiena]

None that I know of. I got sent an email with one after being on Level 4 for a couple weeks, but I didn’t use it. I don’t know if that gets sent to everyone, though.

[lucon1]

If you can afford annual or lifetime, go ahead and get it, but if you can’t(I’m currently in that situation), you can do your reviews for lvl 1-3, and even study ahead if your feeling up to it. You can also take this time to learn some other ways, like learning more useful vocab, and learning basic grammar.

[rewdboy05]

I’ve heard that sometimes they’ll email you a coupon if you wait a week or two after you finish all the level 3 content.

[d-hermit]

You could email them and ask directly.

And don’t worry about the Christmas promotion. It was 30% off of the lifetime, which is still not a steal if you’re going to be done in 2-3 years.

[flowersandflames]

I had a similar issue, I found out about Wanikani in January. Lifetime subs usually are on sale at the end of the year.

My opinion is you shouldn’t wait until the end of the year just to save a little money. Your scarcest resource is going to be time, if you’re trying to learn this language. You’ll need more than a year to get through it even at the fastest pace. Like going to the gym, progress is made a day at a time.

Coupons may be floating around out there on the Google, or you might get one in your email or you might could email them, asking directly. The yearly subscription is your cheapest bet overall, and if you do decide to upgrade to a lifetime account, you will get a pro-rated discount based on any unused time in your yearly subscription. Probably not much if you start now, but it’s something.

[wct]

I’m in a similar boat. I got to level 4 on Oct 27, and didn’t have the cashflow to buy a lifetime membership before the Christmas sale. I emailed them proposing to do some small work for a discount. (The lifetime 'ship is the only thing that really makes sense for me, since I know I’m going all the way to the end – and, perhaps more importantly, will be using it as a reference resource even long after I’ve finished – and cash will always be tight, so best long-term was for the cheapest overall price.)

They kindly and politely declined my offer (they generally don’t do such offers as I was making) and instead offered me a coupon for a discount for 12 months, and if I ended up buying the Christmas lifetime deal, they would pro-rate any extra I had spent on the 12-months into the cost of the lifetime. It was a very generous and courteous offer.

In the end, I was still hesitant, because I wasn’t sure what my finances would look like in the coming couple of months.

Finally, once I knew what my budget was for Christmas-time (which was just before Christmas, actually), I decided to just go straight for the lifetime, since the sale had already started by that point. In the meantime, I had had to ‘pause’ for about a month, which wasn’t so bad actually.

So, I actually decided to use a small low-interest loan (line of credit I still had active from years ago), to cover the ‘bulk’ of the up-front life-time payment. For me, I had spent quite a while considering different options, and this turned out to make the most sense for me, even though I’m very averse to using loans or credit or anything like that generally. But the timing, the fact that I wanted to get back to learning again without too much longer of a ‘gap’, etc. Even though I was technically going ‘over my budget’ in the short-term, in the long-term the investment was worth it to me. I’m greatly enjoying proceeding happily along in my Wanikani journey through the levels. I can handle some short-term budget-pain to squeeze this purchase in.

(I also purchased a similar life-time membership at BunPro.jp for learning grammar, and I’m equally glad I did that as well. Basically identical circumstances. The two subscriptions were my Christmas gift to myself. )

So, while I wouldn’t use my own anecdote to suggest any specific plan for anyone else, at least hopefully it will provide an additional perspective from another person for you or anyone to consider. I’m happy with my purchase. YMMV.

[Haios]

This is what happened with me. After finishing Level 3, I wasn’t in a hurry to buy a subscription because it was near exam time. And assignments and projects were being demanded left, right and centre. Buying at that time would have seemed like a waste, so I waited until the end of exams. Sometime before my final exam, I got an email with a Promo code, which I used immediately after my final exam.

[lsierra]

I got a 50% discount when i paid my subscription at the end of the year.

[Aggelitus]

Depends on how long you want to use Wanikani for. I plan to be done in maybe one and a half years, so I went with an annual subscription. By the time I reach level 60, there are probably better ways for me to keep learning than to do Wanikani again. But if you want to go back to it later, or if you think you might go slowly or be unable to use Wanikani for some time due to your living situation, then a lifetime subscription might be better for you.

Since you already missed the sale, you’re going to be spending 300 euros if you want to pay for this year and then buy a lifetime subscription on sale next december. You could buy a lifetime subscription right away, but you won’t save any money compared to paying for a year and waiting for the next sale, and you’ll be less flexible if you realize that you don’t actually want to do this for multiple years.

I think you should just buy a year for now and see how you feel next december.

[ren_grantz]

@d-hermit

You could email them and ask directly.

I did this during the Christmas sale since I cannot really afford lifetime (even the discounted price) and I don’t think I’ll be doing WK in 3+ years. They offered me 50% discount on either monthly or annual. I paid for the 50% off annual, which is a great deal considering I was already at my level 30s back then.

[sunnymarie1993]

Thanks for your replies everyone!! I’ll take what you guys said into consideration, I appreciate it. I think I’ll try to muster for the annual if I can! I emailed to ask if there were other coupons floating around too (can’t hurt). I’ll just focus on my reviews for now and then go from there. I really like Wanikani though so I plan to stick around

[petro86]

I just finished up a 1 year subscription. I managed to keep up with reviews but made little progress. It’s my fault for not spending more time, but still didn’t get far for the reg price.
I can’t justify CAD$120/yr for just a few levels. What I’m thinking is to get a monthly subscription and try really hard for that month. Then maybe skip a month and do it again. I’d do a 1-year again if I get 1/2 price coupon or something.

At my slow pace, it would make the most sense to get a “life-time” subscription. But I’m not comfortable paying so much money for something that can disappear any time.

[wct]

Well, WK has been around for several years now (don’t know exact number), and there are even other websites that rely upon WK, for example to synchronize user-account data with. Like BunPro, KaniWani, and KameSame, to name a few, all of which I’m also using.

I think the odds of WaniKani just disappearing in the next few years is pretty low, IMHO. Just my two cents.