I'll never forget; 2014, iOS 8 had just come along with some huge advances in Siri. I'm driving across West London to pick up my wife, who's just text me about something. I figured I'd reply by dictating the message to Siri.
After five attempts and absolutely zero success, I just pulled over and tapped out a text.
Apart from setting the odd timer, I don't think I ever used Siri again after that. Not on purpose, any way.
Back when I used an iPhone, I had a few automations through Shortcuts, but nothing critical. Then I got a Pixel, put Graphene on it, and started learning how Android works. At the same time I went all in on Home Assistant over Alexa.
It's been over a year now, so I figured I'd see what I can automate between my phone and my house.
The short answer is: nothing.
There is absolutely nothing that I need my phone to do automatically. Not a single task I need it to accomplish on my behalf.
I saw a post on Reddit a few weeks ago in the Tasker sub. A guy was talking about how one of his automations was to send a randomly selected affirmation or quote from some website to each of his loved ones at 7am. I'm still not quite over that level of psychopathy. The notion that the correct way to show affection is to have an automation randomly select a message to send them every morning.
Thinking on it, I suppose the biggest cost is in terms of my time.
Up until this point, I've put quite a bit of time into learning how things work, and how to deploy things I'd find useful, and that can replace paid for services. Even now things are set up and running, I still have a tendency to fiddle with things. I've spent far more time on my Navidrome server than I ever did on Apple Music, put it that way. The same amount of time listening, mind.
I do have use Mullvad VPN, but not really for any of my hosting, and I do have a Hetzner VPS for my own site, which I have started using to access things. But I can access it all with Tailscale, which is free, as long as I can remember port numbers.
But with those taken into account;
Mullvad: £5
VPS: £15
Domain registration: £35pa
So all told it's about £22 a month.
I do need to look into donating to some of the services I use the most though.
I haven't personally done it, but I was working nights in HMV on the restocking crew when Skyrim launched. We had a midnight opening and laid on a bunch of extra staff to cover the heaving masses desperate to lay their hands on Bethesda's latest masterpiece.
Not criticising you, and you're not wrong. However, buying in bulk suggests a) having the money to do, and b) having somewhere to store the bulk items.
WAY AHEAD OF YOU MATEY