🎤 The interview question

"You just opened a new AWS account. How do you make sure a mistake can't quietly cost you money?"

Freshers get asked this a lot. A good answer is three things you have actually done: know your plan, set an alert, and keep everything in one Region with one tag. Let's do all three in about 10 minutes. 👇

👉 Flow: Check plan → Budget alert → Free Tier usage → One Region + one tag

🧾 Step 1: Know which plan you're on

Since July 2025, a new AWS account picks a Free plan or a Paid plan.

  • 💵 Both get USD $100 in credits at sign-up, and up to $100 more for completing activities
  • ⏳ The Free plan ends after 6 months or when credits run out, whichever is first
  • 🔒 When it ends, the account closes. You have 90 days to upgrade before your data is deleted

Check yours: AWS Console → Billing and Cost Management → Home (credit balance and plan are shown there).

✅ Interview line: "I know which plan I'm on and when it ends."

🔔 Step 2: Create a budget that emails you

Set your account ID once:

ACCOUNT_ID=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text)

Create a $1 monthly budget that emails you at 80%:

aws budgets create-budget \ --account-id "$ACCOUNT_ID" \ --budget '{"BudgetName":"freshers-1-usd","BudgetLimit":{"Amount":"1","Unit":"USD"},"TimeUnit":"MONTHLY","BudgetType":"COST"}' \ --notifications-with-subscribers '[{"Notification":{"NotificationType":"ACTUAL","ComparisonOperator":"GREATER_THAN","Threshold":80,"ThresholdType":"PERCENTAGE"},"Subscribers":[{"SubscriptionType":"EMAIL","Address":"you@example.com"}]}]'

Confirm it exists:

aws budgets describe-budgets --account-id "$ACCOUNT_ID" --query 'Budgets[].BudgetName'

✅ Expected: ["freshers-1-usd"]

📊 Step 3: See your Free Tier usage 

aws freetier get-free-tier-usage --region us-east-1

Each item shows the service, the limit and how much you've used. 👀 Run it after every lab.

💡 Also turn on Billing preferences → Receive AWS Free Tier alerts in the console. That's your second way to hear about spending.

🌍 Step 4: One Region, one tag

Pick one Region and stick to it, so nothing hides in a Region you never open:

aws configure set region ap-south-1

Tag everything you create in a lab:

aws ec2 create-tags --resources <instance-id> --tags Key=project,Value=freshers-lab

Find everything with that tag before you log off:

aws resourcegroupstaggingapi get-resources \ --tag-filters Key=project,Values=freshers-lab \ --query 'ResourceTagMappingList[].ResourceARN'

✅ An empty list [] = nothing left running. 🎉

🧨 Break it on purpose

Set the budget to $0.01, launch a t2.micro for an hour, and watch for the email. Then stop the instance. Now you know your alert works.

🎯 What you can now say in the interview

✅ "I know my plan and when it ends"
✅ "A budget emails me before I spend real money"
✅ "I check Free Tier usage after every lab"
✅ "I work in one Region and tag everything, so cleanup takes one command"

📚 Go deeper

This is the hands-on cut of Session 1 of our free Hands-on Cloud for Freshers course: the full chapter explains why each step matters and what interviewers listen for.

👉 Read the full chapter on TechEazy Consulting

🚀 Real projects and a real internship certificate get you hired. Start at TechEazy Consulting.