How I learn to be frugal in developing an idea

Just wanted to share that thanks to the community I get inspired to solve issues in a more cost efficient way.

As I pivoted out of a full time idea to a side project I did not want to invest in any tool as soon as I am not supposed to earn any money out of it.

I need to find distance between cities. The initial way I went was using Google Maps tools in Google Apps Script. Of course I maxed out the quota as soon as I ramped up the idea on one country.

The normal way - or my normal way - would be to look at buying extra quota.

Instead I decided I could most probably rewrite the code to find another solution. I found a new way just to geocode once the city and store it. Then use the latitude/longitude to calculate distance between 2 points.

What I had to give up : precision because now I have only the distance as the crow flies

What I gain : no need to invest in extra quota. As a "side effect" a faster script :)

So aside of technical consideration I think it is great sometimes to force ourselves to always evaluate benefit vs investment (money/time/ressources)