iPhone Upgrade Program vs. Apple Card Financing

The iPhone Upgrade Program uses loans through Citizens Bank whereas financing through the Apple Card is essentially carrying a balance on your credit card. There are pros and cons to both

• I have several loans through Citizens Bank and, as far as I can tell, none of them show up on my credit report. On the other hand, my Apple Card shows up on my credit report.
• Citizen’s user interface is very confusing whereas my Apple Card is on autopay and I don’t even think about it.
• Additionally, you can use your Apple Card as a payment method for your Citizen’s loans to get the 3% rewards.

Thus, unless you are worried about your credit utilization on your Apple Card, financing on your Apple Card is much better.

Sales Tax

When you upgrade your phone, you have to pay sales tax on the entire product, which you can’t finance. For me, this is about a 10% sales tax in California on every upgrade. You may think that you are paying the same amount every year, but you’ll probably forget about sales tax!

Trade-in Value

With the iPhone Upgrade Program, you are effectively trading in your device at 50% of the cost every year. The MSRP for my iPhone Pro 12 Max 256GB was $1,199 last year, and Apple is offering me $790 to trade in. With the iPhone Upgrade Program, the effective trade-in value is $600. Thus, Apple is making $190 more per phone through the iPhone Upgrade Program than from regular trade-ins.

Apple Care

The iPhone Upgrade Program requires you to subscribe to AppleCare, but it’s exactly the same price as subscribing to it on your own. Additionally, if you don’t use the iPhone Upgrade Program, you could cancel your AppleCare subscription anytime. I always buy AppleCare because I am very careless with my phone, so to me this is equivalent.

Accessories

Every time you a new phone, you probably need to buy a new case for it too. I do because I am very careless with my phone. Apple accessories are expensive - $49 per case - and can also be financed. Additionally, I’ve never had a case that lasted more than a year, so I end up buying at least two cases per phone. Consider all the additional accessories you need to buy when upgrading your phone.

To upgrade or not?

Going forward, I am going to stick with Apple Card Installment Plans, subscribe to AppleCare monthly, and trade my phone in whenever I want to upgrade. I am going to let my current iPhone Upgrade Plan expire and never use it again.

2023 Addition: Trade-In Promotions

With the release of the Apple iPhone 15 in 2023, many wireless providers had really good trade-in promotions. Here’s the promotion I took advantage from AT&T:

I traded-in my Apple iPhone 13, which was about 1.5 years old at the time and valued at around $600, for $1,000 to AT&T, netting me an additional $400 in value. I essentially used my 13 for 2 years for about $300, which is a great deal. Additionally, my payment term is over 3 years, so I’m paying about $6/month for 3 years for my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I don’t know how often these promotions come along, but they provide the best value.

The only negative with trading in directly to a service provider is that your device will be locked to that carrier. This means that you won’t be able to add an additional line to your account such as when you are traveling. For example, I was unable to set up Google Fi as a second line on my phone for traveling. Instead, I just got a cheap Android phone as a second SIM.

I purchased two LG UltraFine 5K monitors when they were first released around November 2019 with a 25% introductory discount. However, these initial monitors were plagued by a Wi-Fi router issue. My screens would randomly flicker, which became really annoying. A free fix through warranty helped reduced the flicker, but the flickers increased over the course of a few years. Eventually, I switched to new monitors, but this was an expensive mistake.

Dyson Fans

I bought a few Dyson fans specifically for three reasons: they’re quiet, they look nice, and they have an app. However, I realized after buying my third one that they were quite unreliable. My newest fan’s motors blew out, which seems to be pretty common. Since I only had it for a few months, when I tried to get it fixed through warranty, they made me drive to their North Hollywood service center, which is an about 45 minute commute for me each way. They had no option to ship to a repair center, which was what I was accustomed to. Just for this reason, I would never buy a Dyson again.

Sonos

During Black Friday, I was looking for speakers for my living room which for the longest time only had the TV’s speakers. I settled on Sonos as it seemed at the time to be the best smart speakers available. I will say, the speakers are pretty good, the sub-woofer is great, and the app is flawless.

My only regret is that I later bought two Apple HomePods for my room and they were insanely good for $400 total. If I had known this, I would’ve bought Apple HomePods for my living room as well. I don’t think Sonos is worth the cost unless you buy the Fives; when on sale, Apple HomePods cost as much as the Ones and are much better.

CB2 Furniture

I’ve purchased many items from CB2 and I’ve regretted all furniture purchases - accessories have been okay since it’s hard to mess those up. The first purchase was a coat hangar that is very flimsy - I’ve tighten all the screws and it feels like it’s going to collapse every time you put another coat on it.

My biggest regret was my bed. I bought a metal frame bed, but after a few years, the finishing on the head board started coming off. It looked pretty gross, but there was nothing I could do about it. The final straw was when I broke two slats - I asked CB2 where I could buy more and they said that this bed frame was no longer being sold so there aren’t any replacements. CB2 seems to be the fast fashion of furniture - stick with classics like the Ikea Malm or go full metal like I did at Room and Board - steel slats remove the need for center beam support!

USB-C Wall Charger

Instead of bringing a charger for every device you have, you can simply buy a USB-C wall charger to charge your laptop, tablets, and phones. This is especially a godsend at airports and in the plane as you’d only need to plug in one device. As long as the wall charger is powerful enough, it will be able to charge all devices simultaneously. I recommend at least a 60W charger, 100W if you have an Apple MacBook Pro.

Recommended product: Anker PowerPort Atom III Slim 63W

USB-C Battery Pack

In addition to the wall charger, look into a USB-C battery pack that supports charging at least 20W through its USB-C port. This will allow you to use the battery pack for your laptops. As I write this post, I am charging both my iPhone and my MacBook Air on a plane.

Recommended product: Anker PowerCore Essential 20000 PD Portable Charger

Travel Power Adapter

USB-C wall chargers support both 120v and 240v outlets, so you can plug it into a cheap travel power adapter and charge all your devices. Additionally, these adapters support low wattage USB charging, providing you a few more USB ports for charging.

AirTags

The baggage carousel gives me intense anxiety, so getting an AirTag to make sure that no one has stolen my luggage is a godsend. I haven’t found any other good uses for the AirTag though.

iPad for a Second Screen

There are a lot of companies making second screens for traveling. However, if you have a Mac and a recent iPad, you can use your iPad as a second screen. My MacBook Air + iPad Pro have been a great travel combination.

For more information to see whether your iPad is compatible, visit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380.

T-Mobile for International Data

With T-Mobile, you have slow data speeds around the world for free. This has been sufficient for me for two weeks in Europe, with me only paying $5 once to get 512MB of high-speed data in Bruges, which did not have easily-accessible Wi-Fi like other cities I explored. This is cheaper than almost all other carriers, including Google Fi.

The requirements I had for a new monitor were:

• Ability to work with non-MacOS computers as I want to be able to use these for a PC in the future. The LG UltraFine monitors only support MacOS.
• <= 27" - 30"+ monitors are way too big for me
• 16:9 or 16:10 ratio - I hate ultra-wide monitors
• Flat monitor - curved monitors are dumb
• 4K+ resolution
• HDR colors
• Thunderbolt 3 + charging
• AMD FreeSync and/or nVidia G-Sync
• Less than $500

Thus, I settled for the LG 27UL850-W.

Gaslit by Customer Support

The first time I purchased this monitor, I ran into a particular issue - a USB hub would show up mounted on my Mac and get improperly ejected every time my Mac went to sleep. This was utterly annoying.

I asked customer support, but they said, “this USB hub is not from the monitor”, even though the monitor was the only thing plugged into my Mac and it would only show up if my monitor was plugged in. I gave up and simply returned the monitors (thank god for Amazon’s easy return policy).

Buying Them Again a Year Later

I masochistically stuck with my LG UltraFines for a year, but they continuously deteriorated and flickered more and more often. After working from home for over a year, this began to affect my work, so I started looking for monitors again. Finally, my friend mentioned that he bought this monitor and was happy with it. I mentioned to him my issue from buying it before, but then he found my post on the LG support forum, which I don’t remember making, finally being answered. Seems like my issue was fixed and this monitor was still the best on the market, so I bought them again.

Unfortunately, it looks like the LG forums were removed, otherwise I would share a link to the post.

First Impressions

When I plugged my monitors in, the first thing I noticed was that everything was gigantic. Switching from a 5K to a 4K monitor reduces pixel density quite a bit. This isn’t a big deal for me though since I constantly zoom in and out with most of my applications.

Color-wise, the monitor was fine. The speakers are terrible, though I’d prefer not to have speakers at all on my monitor. You get what you pay for.

I Miss MacOS Integrations

The speaker buttons as well as the monitor brightness buttons on your Mac don’t work on these monitors. I’m not sure why this is the case - after all, this should just be software and other LG products support it. Nevertheless, it’s a little annoying to manually press buttons on the monitor to change the volume and brightness, but this isn’t a deal breaker for me.

USB Hub Disconnects

I connected an external USB drive to my monitor, but I noticed that every time my Mac went to sleep, my hard drive would get ejected. This was a little annoying, but I simply plugged my hard drive directly to my Mac. If I had more than a few USB devices, I would have to buy a separate USB hub.

Also, see this post: https://stanislas.blog/2020/02/lg-27ul850-broken-usb-c/

Conclusion

This monitor has been fine for me, but there are a few quirks that I find annoying. However, given its specifications and price point, I doubt there’s anything better.