When It's Time to Just Pay the Couple Bucks
Okay so last time we talked about how much free storage you actually get and where it goes. Today's the lesson where I tell you when to stop fighting it.
I feel like this is the one people resist the most, out of everything I teach in this class. More than the folders, more than deleting the 396 sunsets. People will spend an actual hour of their life deleting old screenshots and blurry photos to squeeze under a free storage limit, when the upgrade costs less than a drink from the gas station.
So let's just do the math together, out loud, because I think that's what actually changes people's minds.
What it costs
On iCloud, once you go over the free 5 GB, the next tier up is usually around a dollar a month for 50 GB. Most families need to go up one more step from there, which lands around three dollars a month for 200 GB, and that one you can share with your family members too, so it's really covering more than just you.
Google Photos works about the same way through Google One. A couple bucks a month gets you 100 GB. Bump up from there if you need to.
I'm not going to pretend I know the exact price to the penny because it does shift around sometimes, and honestly it might be different depending on when you're taking this class. But it's in that range. It's a coffee. It's less than a coffee most places anymore, actually.
Why I tell people to just pay it
Here's my opinion, and I've said some version of this in almost every lesson so far: your time is worth more than the hours you'll spend babysitting a free storage limit.
Think about what the alternative actually costs you. You spend a Saturday afternoon going through old photos deciding what to delete. You get anxious every time you open your camera app because you're not sure if you're about to get the "storage full" message again. You put off backing up new photos because you're worried about the limit, which means the backup isn't actually protecting you in the moment you need it, like at a recital, or a baptism, or whatever's happening in your life that week.
That's not worth two dollars to you? It is to me. I decided that a long time ago and I've never looked back.
The Inez story
I'll tell you why I actually get serious about this stuff, because it wasn't really about running out of storage at first.
My mom, Inez, wanted the pictures from my temple sealing to Travis printed. Simple request. She wanted them on her wall. And I went looking for them on my phone and I could not find them. They were in there somewhere, I knew that much, but they were buried under years of screenshots and receipt photos and memes I'd saved and forgotten about. I was scrolling for probably twenty minutes before I gave up and told her I'd find them "later."
That's the moment I got serious about actually organizing things, and it's also, if I'm honest, the moment I stopped being precious about the free storage tier. Because what's the point of saving two dollars a month if the tradeoff is you can't find the photo your own mother is asking you for? That math doesn't work out in your favor. It just doesn't.
How to actually check and upgrade
If you're on iPhone: go to Settings, tap your name at the top, tap iCloud, tap Manage Account Storage or Manage Storage depending on your version, and you'll see a "Change Storage Plan" or "Upgrade" option right there. It walks you through the tiers.
If you're on Google Photos: open the app, tap your profile picture in the top right, and it'll usually show you how much storage you're using right there. Tap that and it'll take you into Google One where you can see the plans.
Either way you're looking for maybe three or four taps total. It is not complicated. I think people assume it's going to be some whole process and it's really just picking a number off a list.
When I'd actually tell you to hold off
If you're nowhere near your limit, don't upgrade yet, there's no reason to pay for storage you're not using. And if you've genuinely still got a lot of junk in there, screenshots you don't need, duplicate photos, that kind of thing, it might be worth doing a pass of deleting first to see if you even need the next tier. Sometimes you don't.
But if you've already cleaned things up and you're still bumping the ceiling, or if you know deep down you're never going to be the person who deletes 400 sunset photos down to four, just pay the two bucks. I mean that.
Before next time
Go check your storage usage this week, either app, and if you're close to your limit just go ahead and upgrade. It'll take you two minutes and you'll stop thinking about it, which is honestly the whole point.