I got through 4 chains and about 11k miles on my last cassette. And it wasn’t even playing up. I only did that because it was in for some other work anyway.

My LBS told me I should do the large chainring too. Which was 9 months old. No thanks.

Soinds like the OP has no cassette removal tools either so would have to pay someone to do it. Just do the chain. I always count the links (and remember to add 1 for the quicklink if the old chain didn’t have one)

Quicklink removal pliers are a very useful tool too. Like the Park Tool MLP-1.2