How does the Life Cost Calculator work?

List the recurring things in your life, one line each, with the minutes each time and how often, and what it costs. The calculator turns every line into hours and money a year. It then divides the money by your real hourly wage, so the cost of a subscription and the cost of a habit both read in one unit, hours of your life.

What is a real hourly wage?

An idea from Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. Take your take-home pay, subtract what the job costs you (commuting, work clothes, bought lunches, the things you spend to recover), and divide by every hour the job takes, including getting ready, the commute and winding down. It is usually well below the hourly rate on your payslip. If you would rather type a number, the calculator takes that too.

Why count money in hours?

Because you paid for the money with hours. A line that costs 600 a year at a real wage of 15 an hour took 40 hours of work to pay for. Adding those to the hours the habit itself takes gives one figure you can compare across very different lines, and a plain question to ask of each, whether it is worth that much of your year.

What does the “invested instead” figure assume?

That the money you mark to cut or trim is put aside every month instead and grows at the yearly rate you set, 5% by default, compounded monthly, with no taxes or fees. Use a rate after inflation and the result reads in today's money. It is an illustration of compounding, not a forecast or financial advice.

Where is my ledger saved, and what does a share link contain?

The ledger, your wage and your settings are saved in this browser after every change, so a reload keeps them. If you are signed in, they are also saved to your HourLife account, so they open on your other devices, and you can delete them there in Settings. Signed out, nothing is sent to HourLife or anyone else. A share link carries your lines, never your wage, after the

Which currencies does it use?

Dollars, euros, pounds, yen, rupees and a few more. The currency only changes the symbol and number format. Every amount is yours to enter, so the sample prices are round placeholders, not quotes for any real service.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. On a phone the ledger and the bill stack in one column and every field is a full-size control. On a larger screen the ledger and the bill sit side by side, and the bill updates as you type.

Keep this tool for later

Tools
Life Cost Calculator

What are your habits really costing you?

List the things you do and pay for again and again. The calculator adds up the hours they take and the hours you worked to pay for them, so a coffee, a subscription and an evening on your phone all show their cost in hours of your year.

Open the calculator Start from a sample ledger

Up to 24 lines
PNG, CSV or text export
Free, no account

HourLifeLife cost · per year

You pay with 1,421 h 89 waking days · $6,088

How it works

About ten minutes, with your bank statement or screen-time report open beside it.

Work out your real wage

Enter your take-home pay, what the job costs you, and every hour it takes, commute included. Or type an hourly figure if you already know it. This is what turns money into hours.
List what recurs

One line for each habit, subscription or small spend: minutes each time, how often, and what it costs, each time or by the week, month or year. The bill prices it as you type.
Mark a plan

Set a line to Trim, which halves it, or Cut. The bill shows the hours and money that gives back each year, what those hours could be instead, and what the money would grow to over 10, 20 and 30 years.

The arithmetic, in three lines

Nothing is hidden. The calculator shows each of these with your own numbers.

1 · Real hourly wage What an hour of your job actually pays
Take-home pay, less what the job costs you (commuting, work clothes, bought lunches, recovering from it), divided by every hour the job takes, not only the paid ones.

($42,000 − $4,000) ÷ ((40 + 8 h) × 48 wk) = $16.49/h, not the $21.88 that pay ÷ paid hours suggests
2 · Hours of life Time spent, plus time worked to pay
A line costs the hours it takes and the hours of work its money took. Adding them puts a free habit and a pricey subscription on one scale.

Coffee on the way in: 43 h + $1,434 ÷ $16.49 = 130 h a year
3 · Invested instead The money a plan frees, put aside monthly
The yearly money from lines you trim or cut, saved each month and compounded monthly at a rate you choose. No taxes or fees, and an illustration, not a forecast.

$222 a month at 5% a year: $89,929 after 20 years

The real hourly wage and the habit of pricing purchases in “life energy” come from Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez (1992, revised 2018). The calculator counts the waking year as 16 hours a day, 5,840 hours, and converts a weekly habit at 365 ÷ 7 weeks a year.

Start from a ledger like yours

Each one opens the calculator with typical lines already filled in, priced at the sample wage until you enter yours. Change the numbers until they are true. If you already have a ledger, Undo brings it back.

Questions

How does the Life Cost Calculator work?

List the recurring things in your life, one line each, with the minutes each time and how often, and what it costs. The calculator turns every line into hours and money a year. It then divides the money by your real hourly wage, so the cost of a subscription and the cost of a habit both read in one unit, hours of your life.
What is a real hourly wage?

An idea from Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. Take your take-home pay, subtract what the job costs you (commuting, work clothes, bought lunches, the things you spend to recover), and divide by every hour the job takes, including getting ready, the commute and winding down. It is usually well below the hourly rate on your payslip. If you would rather type a number, the calculator takes that too.
Why count money in hours?

Because you paid for the money with hours. A line that costs 600 a year at a real wage of 15 an hour took 40 hours of work to pay for. Adding those to the hours the habit itself takes gives one figure you can compare across very different lines, and a plain question to ask of each, whether it is worth that much of your year.
What does the “invested instead” figure assume?

That the money you mark to cut or trim is put aside every month instead and grows at the yearly rate you set, 5% by default, compounded monthly, with no taxes or fees. Use a rate after inflation and the result reads in today's money. It is an illustration of compounding, not a forecast or financial advice.
Where is my ledger saved, and what does a share link contain?

The ledger, your wage and your settings are saved in this browser after every change, so a reload keeps them. If you are signed in, they are also saved to your HourLife account, so they open on your other devices, and you can delete them there in Settings. Signed out, nothing is sent to HourLife or anyone else. A share link carries your lines, never your wage, after the
Which currencies does it use?

Dollars, euros, pounds, yen, rupees and a few more. The currency only changes the symbol and number format. Every amount is yours to enter, so the sample prices are round placeholders, not quotes for any real service.
Does it work on a phone?

Yes. On a phone the ledger and the bill stack in one column and every field is a full-size control. On a larger screen the ledger and the bill sit side by side, and the bill updates as you type.