A FREE TOOL FROM THE FREEDOM NUMBER
Every dollar you spend is hours you traded to earn it — your life energy.
Find out what your next big purchase really costs — in hours of your life at your true hourly wage — and what that same money could have become invested instead.
Inspired by Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez.
Most people overestimate this by double. Let's find the true number.
What are you thinking of buying?
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THE REAL COST
Same money, working for you in a low-cost index fund at 7%/year.
7% is a long-run global equity assumption before inflation. Illustrative, not a forecast. Methodology →
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Your real wage, this purchase, and a worksheet to price every future buy in hours of your life.
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METHODOLOGY
This tool puts a number on an idea from Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez's Your Money or Your Life: money is something you trade your life energy for. We don't reproduce the book — we just do its core calculation for you. If the idea lands, read the book.
We start with after-tax pay (gross minus your effective tax rate — auto-estimated from 2025–26 ATO brackets plus the 2% Medicare levy when you pick AUD, editable for any country). Then we subtract the money your job quietly costs you — commute, work clothes, lunches, coffee — and we divide by the hours your job really takes, not just the paid ones: paid hours + commute + decompression time, across ~48 working weeks a year.
Real wage = (after-tax pay − work-related costs) ÷ (paid + commute + decompression hours).
The gap between this and your headline rate is usually large. That's the point.
We divide the purchase price by your real hourly wage to get the hours of life it costs, then express that in working weeks. If you finance it, we use the total you'll actually repay including interest — calculated with a standard amortised-loan formula — not the sticker price.
We show what the same money becomes if invested instead, compounding at 7% per year (a long-run global-equity assumption, before inflation). For financed purchases we also show what the monthly repayment would grow to if you invested it over the loan term. This is illustrative — real returns vary and are never guaranteed.
It's a thinking tool, not financial advice, and not an instruction to never buy anything. Some purchases are worth many hours of your life. The goal is to make the trade visible so the choice is yours.
General advice warning: This tool provides general information and education only. It does not consider your personal financial situation, objectives, or needs, and is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. The Freedom Number is not a licensed or registered financial adviser in any country and does not provide personal advice. Tax rules, investment options, and regulations vary by jurisdiction — before acting, consider your own circumstances and seek advice from a professional licensed in your own country (such as a financial adviser, accountant, or tax agent). All investing carries risk, including the possible loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. All figures are illustrative and based on simplified assumptions.