Don't pay $100/month for the Claude Max plan. Use these 7 hacks to protect your tokens (and your money):
1. When you keep ๐บ๐ฎ๐ป๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฝ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฎ๐, Claude rereads all of them every time you send a message, even the ones you are done with.
๐๐ถ๐
: Start a new chat for each topic. When one gets long, ask for a short summary, copy it, and paste it into a fresh chat.
๐ฎ. ๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐ ๐๐ฝ๐น๐ผ๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐ฎ ๐ฃ๐๐, Claude pays for it twice. Once to read the words, and again because it turns every page into an image and reads that too.
Fix: Copy the text out, paste it into a plain document, and upload that. Same words, a fraction of the cost.
3. Claude has three models.: A fast cheap one, a balanced one, and a heavy expensive one. Most people leave it on the heavy one for everything, even fixing typos.
Fix: Use the cheap one for small tasks and the heavy one for hard problems.
4. When Claude gets something wrong, you probably say "no, I meant this." That reply stacks on top of everything above it, and Claude rereads the whole pile to answer.
Fix: scroll up, edit your original message, and run it again.
5. If you upload the ๐๐ฎ๐บ๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ถ๐น๐ฒ ๐๐ผ ๐ณ๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ณ๐ณ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฎ๐๐, you pay to read it five times.
Fix: Put it in a Project once instead. Every chat inside that Project can use the file without uploading it again.
6. You explain everything about you and your work repeatedly.
Fix: Open Settings, then Capabilities, and tell Claude who you are, what you work on, and how you like answers. It carries that into every new chat, so you stop burning the first few messages re-explaining yourself.
7. Asking Claude to make a doc, sheet, or slide costs more than a normal answer. You build one, scrap it, and build again. And pay the cost for every iteration.
Fix: Get the plan right in a plain chat first, then build it once.
I changed those seven things and never hit the limit again. Same usage.
Saving tokens is the easy part. The real shift is when you ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐น๐ฎ๐๐ฑ๐ฒ.
I made a free course that does exactly that. You learn Claude Code inside Claude Code. 6 Modules:
1. How to write effective prompts
2. How to build a skill
3. How to build an Agent
4. How to connect apps via MCP
5. How to build a second brain
6. How to optimize cost, latency, quality
It takes 5 hours to build all of this. Completely FREE. (link in comments)