Calculators → Cost in work hours
Cost in work hours calculator
Prices are abstract. Hours are not. Convert any purchase into the working time it actually costs you.
Your result
| Price | Time to earn it |
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For the rate that reflects what the job really costs you, including the commute, use the true hourly wage calculator first — the result carries over to this page automatically.
Why the conversion changes decisions
Money is a unit most people handle badly. Whether £400 is expensive depends on context none of us hold in mind reliably. Two and a half working days, on the other hand, is immediately legible — you know exactly what that feels like, because you have lived it.
The effect is not uniform, which is what makes it useful rather than merely gloomy. Small recurring costs come out looking much worse than their price tag suggests, because the annual total is what matters and nobody thinks in annual totals. Durable one-off purchases often come out looking better: a good chair at three days of work, used daily for a decade, is a straightforwardly sound trade.
The rate you choose sets how honest the answer is. Your contracted rate gives the flattering version. Your true hourly wage, with the commute and unpaid breaks counted, gives a harder one. Your net true hourly wage, after tax, gives the real one — and it is frequently thirty to forty per cent below the number on your contract.
Getting the rate right
Use take-home pay. You cannot buy anything with gross pay, so dividing a price by your gross hourly rate quietly understates the hours by however much tax, National Insurance and pension take — typically a quarter or more of the difference.
This page does not attempt to model your tax position, because doing that properly needs your code, your band, your pension arrangement and your student loan plan. It is simpler and more accurate for you to take the net figure from your own payslip: divide your actual monthly take-home by the hours you actually gave the job that month.
If you have run the true hourly wage calculator, its result is carried over here automatically as a starting point. That figure is gross, so scaling it down by your effective tax rate gets you close to the honest number.
Frequently asked questions
How do I work out what something costs in hours of work?
Divide the price by your hourly rate. A £60 purchase against a rate of £12 an hour costs five hours of work. Using your true hourly wage rather than your contracted rate gives a more honest answer, because it counts the commute and unpaid breaks the job also takes from you.
Should I use my gross or net hourly rate?
Net, if you want the figure that reflects reality. You buy things with take-home pay, not gross pay, so dividing a price by your gross rate understates the hours considerably — often by a quarter or more. The calculator does not know your tax position, so enter a net rate yourself if that is the comparison you want.
Why price things in hours rather than money?
Money is abstract and hours are not. Most people have a poor intuition for whether £400 is a lot, but a very clear intuition about whether something is worth two and a half working days. The conversion tends to make small recurring costs look worse and one-off purchases of durable things look better than the price alone suggests.
Does this account for a subscription or repeat purchase?
Enter the annual total rather than the monthly price and the answer becomes far more revealing. A subscription at £12 a month is £144 a year, which on a modest rate is well over a full working day every year, repeating indefinitely for as long as you keep paying it.