As a Dragon user for more than 15 years now, I'd say it's DEFINITELY worth ever penny. The speech recognition keeps getting better and better, and as the effects of My CP continue to increase their toll on my typing, Dragon is my go to software. Its learning ability is even good enough to master my Kiwi-accented pronunciation of Hindi and Panjabi names. Dragon is the reason I gave up running dualboot systems several years ago, when I realised there was nothing in the Linux world that even came close. There still isn't sadly.

So if you're recording your own voice for later transcription, I'd say you can't go past Dragon. It's basically the only game in town, and it got there by crushing the opposition qualitatively.