What does this really cost?
Money is stored freedom. So the true price of a thing isn't its price tag: it's the savings needed to pay for it forever, and the months of work those savings cost you. Put a number in and see it in the only currency that matters: your time.
Explain it like I’m five
Everything has two prices. The one on the tag you pay once. The real one is the pot it takes to keep paying for the thing forever, and the weeks of work it costs you to grow that pot. This page shows the real price, in your time.
New to all of it? Start from zero: ten short lessons that assume nothing.
The Freedom Price Tag
A habit, a subscription, a bill: something you’ll pay for good.
Sets the pace: how fast you build the pot.
The real price
2 years, 4 months
of working life
To fund €80/month for good, you need €28,800 invested. At your pace, that’s how much longer you’d keep working to build it.
Worth it? Sometimes, absolutely. The point isn’t to stop — it’s to know what you’re trading.
A reframe, not a budgeting rule. Spend freely on what genuinely makes your life better: being a miser is just being broke on purpose. The forever price counts your savings invested at a steady real return; the one-off price is plain saving time. Not advice.
The link carries these exact numbers. Anyone with it can read them, and opening it sends the address to the host.
Common questions
- When it says “€128 in 20 years”, will I really have €128?
- In today’s money, yes. And that’s the point. The return is counted after inflation, so €128 means the spending power €128 has right now, twenty years out. You’d have more euros than that on paper; they’d buy about what €128 buys today.
- A €40 mug is “1 day of working life”? How?
- It’s how long you’d work to save that €40 at your pace. Put away €1,000 a month and €40 is under a day’s worth of saving. The tool prices things in your time instead of your money. That’s the whole idea.
- Why is €40 a month over a year of work, when €40 once is a single day?
- Because “every month” you pay it for the rest of your life. To cover €40 a month forever you need a big pot behind it (about €14,400), and building that at your pace takes around a year and two months. A one-off is just the one €40.
- “1 year, 2 months of working life”: is that after I retire, or before?
- Before. It’s how much longer you’d keep working and saving to build the extra pot that habit needs, so a €40-a-month subscription pushes your retirement date out by about a year and two months. Drop it and you reach the finish line that much sooner.
- What’s the “working days a month” slider for?
- Only so the time reads in real days. Most people work about 21 days a month; slide it to match your own month and the “1 day”, “2 weeks” and so on adjust with it. It doesn’t change the money, just how the time is spelled out.
- Is this telling me to stop spending?
- The opposite. It’s a reframe, not a budget: spend freely on what genuinely makes your life better, once you can see the real price in time. Being a miser is just being broke on purpose.
Nothing here is financial, investment, medical or retirement advice: it’s arithmetic and education. The calculators use the numbers you enter, The Exit Rehearsal compares your own Plan and Reality without interpreting either, and The Spare Key prices the fallback you enter without recommending one. Some tools remember work in the browser, some can place a scenario in the page address, and the Rehearsal and the Spare Key stay in this browser unless you print them, download them, or keep them in your account. Each tool tells you what it keeps and where. Decisions about your money are yours, ideally with a licensed adviser. I’m happily not one.
Bring me a challenge.
The Exit Audit, then ninety minutes: a straight verdict, real alternatives with their pros and cons, and your first move. If you want someone to nod along, I’m the wrong person to pay.