How it works
Prices are in dollars, but you pay for things with hours of your life. The calculator works out what you actually keep for each hour of work after tax, then divides the price by it.
Hours of work = price ÷ (hourly pay × (1 − tax rate))
The idea comes from the personal-finance classic Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, which calls this your "life energy" and asks whether each purchase is worth the hours it costs.
Worked example
You earn $25 an hour and about 22% goes to tax, so you keep $19.50 for each hour worked.
A $1,200 phone costs you 62 hours of work, about 7.7 full working days.
A $5.50 coffee every workday costs $1,320 a year, or 68 hours of work.
Make it more honest
- Add commuting time to your hours and commuting costs to the price side. Your true hourly rate is often lower than your pay slip suggests.
- Include work costs such as work clothes, lunches bought because you're at work, and childcare.
- Use it for big decisions, not guilt over small ones. Knowing a car upgrade costs six weeks of work is the kind of number that changes a choice.
Questions people ask
What tax rate should I use?
The share of your gross pay that doesn't reach your account: income tax plus payroll taxes. Divide your take-home pay by your gross pay and subtract from 1. For example, $3,900 take-home from $5,000 gross is 22%.
I'm salaried. Does this still work?
Yes. Choose "Year" and enter your salary; the calculator converts it to an hourly rate using your weekly hours over 52 weeks.
Sources
- Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, Your Money or Your Life (1992; revised 2018)
- IRS: Social Security and Medicare withholding rates (Topic 751)
Reviewed September 25, 2026 by The Dollars World team. How we build and check our calculators. This is general information, not financial advice.