Money is time you traded for it. Ask how many working hours a purchase really costs.
Price things in hours of your life.
You take home €15 an hour. Rank these by how many hours of work they cost you in a year. Most first.
Small things you pay for every day cost more hours than the big things you think about.
← Red LinesRed Line 3 of 48 The idea Your real hourly pay Try it Where it bends This game’s numbersHow strong the proof isDThin proof Where it comes from
Every euro you spend was paid for with hours of your life. Turn a price into hours and it often looks different.
€2,000 for 160 hours looks like €12.50 an hour. Take off the €200 that work costs you (travel, lunches) and add the 20 hours of getting there: €1,800 for 180 hours, €10 an hour.
Next time something costs €600, ask: is it worth 60 hours, a week and a half of work? Sometimes yes. Now you know the price.
Some spending, like health or learning, buys time back. Hours are a way to see a price, not a reason never to spend.
Worked out on this page
A useful way to see a price, from one book. Studies show hourly thinking changes how people value time, but not that it improves spending.
- Your Money or Your Life Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin, Viking, 1992
- When time is money: The effect of hourly payment on the evaluation of time Sanford E. DeVoe & Jeffrey Pfeffer, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 104(1), 1-13, 2007
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · How we grade
- A Strong proof: Many good studies or long official data, from different teams or countries, point the same way.
- B Good proof, with limits: Solid studies agree on the direction, but the size varies, or the data covers few places or few kinds of people.
- C Mixed proof: Some good studies for, some against, or the evidence covers only part of the line.
- D Thin proof: Mostly one book’s argument, one survey or stories. It may be wise, but it has not been tested well.
- = True by the sums: It follows from arithmetic, so no study can overturn it. We still show what real data says.
Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life (1992). In our words, not quoted.
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