I live in a mountain community mostly consisting of retired people 20= miles from Jackson, CA- we are fortunate to have a variety of small businesses that make it convenient to not have to drive 20+ miles down to Jackson for any major shopping. One of those businesses is a small but good grocery store with all the thing of a larger supermarket
- good meat, produce, deli Items not carried by Dollar G. - Well a couple years ago Dollar G came up with a deal to take over the lease on the building of the grocery store- the areas population screamed blood murder - got petition and stopped the take over - well Dollar G bought a lot across the road built a building and was quoted of saying "they were going to run the grocery store out of business - as I said we are in a mountain community 3,500 ft elevation it is known as "the snow line" we get some snow 4 to 10 inches mostly but every year or so 18 to 24 comes in and dew to this being CA some times it is quite wet and heavy OK Dollar G is cheap on everything so the must have been cheap on their building as on our first snow fall this year it was heavy and deep 30 inches on my driveway. This was too much for the new Dollar G store as the roof caved in, destroying the building - no word of them rebuilding.

Debating subscription vs version license is six of one, half dozen of the other, IF you believe in staying current with software. I actually get more satisfaction out of trying new tools than in saving money. I worked hard, invested well, and enjoy the fruits of my labor. It's a hobby, now, and a part time business when I feel like it. But it's worth it to me to keep learning.

OTOH, professionals and businesses prefer the subscription model for its predictability. Before the subscription schemes, a business like the one I worked for would spend $40,000 to set up a department for photo retouching. 18 months later, a new version of Photoshop came along. We didn't upgrade, because it was several hundred dollars per seat. The lab across town did. Five of our best people left to go work there. Three years later, we finally upgraded, to the third version since the one we bought. It was a disaster, because we had to retrain everyone in the department. Three versions of Photoshop back then was an absurd amount of change!

With subscriptions, that does not happen. Everyone is current with their software and their knowledge. You do have to plan for computer and OS upgrades, but that's usually on a 3 to 5 year cycle in corporate production environments anyway.

If you don't care whether you use the latest software, then buying a package and "holding it 'til your hard drive crashes" (not literally!) can be economical. But if you're 80 and that happens, are you going to want to learn a new package on a new computer? Some will, some won't. But good luck getting the old software to run on a new system, even if you have the license key and the installer files. It's a lot easier when the software is updated each quarter and you get a steady drip feed of new features.