How are you using models in Cursor so a $60 plan is enough for a full-time job?

Hey everyone,

Following up on my previous thread about [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1qm0yhq/how_are_you_getting_cursor_to_actually_follow/)—I’m still testing the advice people gave there (thanks everyone for the responses!), but now I have a more focused question about models and costs.

I’m on Pro+ and use Cursor full-time at work. I rely on it every day, and that's not going to change. However, the Auto model doesn't meet my expectations of the quality of output, even after making good prompts—the quality of response of more premium models is far better. But premium models burn through tokens very quickly, so I have to restrict their use a lot.

What I'm trying to figure out is how other full-time users balance this in practice so that a $60/month plan is actually enough.

More concretely:

1. How do you structure your model usage so that a $60/month plan works for full-time work?
   * Do you reserve expensive models only for certain categories of tasks (e.g., architecture, bigger refactors, complex debugging) and use Auto for everything else?
   * Do you have any rough strategy like "expensive model only for the first deep pass, then Auto for iterations," or a certain percentage of requests you cap it at?
2. How do you decide *when* to switch from Auto to a better model during a session?
   * Do you start with Auto and upgrade only if the answer is clearly not good enough, or do you always start with a premium model for some types of tasks?
   * Do you rewrite/shorten prompts when using expensive models to save tokens, or keep a separate "short prompt style" for them?
3. For people who feel a noticeable quality gap but still stay within $60: what does your day look like?
   * Rough number of chats/tasks per day.
   * How often you end up on a premium model in a typical day or week.
   * Any practical tricks to avoid burning tokens unnecessarily (e.g., resetting vs continuing a long thread, how long you let a thread run on an expensive model, etc.).

I'm not questioning the value of the better models—I actually prefer working with them. I'm just trying to learn from others how to use them *strategically* so that:

* Auto covers as much as possible, and
* higher-end models are used in a targeted way that fits into a $60/month budget for a full-time job.

For context: the $60 plan doesn't work for me because at my company I'm basically working alone on the entire application/module, which requires a lot of coding with AI assistance.

Would really appreciate concrete examples of your model mix, settings, and habits. Thanks!