Use the browser extension while you shop

The PiggySize browser extension puts the True Cost Calculator on the page you're already shopping. On a product page at a retailer it supports, a small badge appears near the price showing how long you have to work to pay for it — and, when it can, what that money could grow to by the time you retire.

Before you start

• The extension is not in the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. Install it using the instructions on the browser extension page (opens in a new tab).
• Connecting it to your account is optional. Without a connection, you type your own hourly pay into the extension popup and everything still works.
• To connect an account you need to be the account owner or spouse, and the True Cost Calculator switch in Settings (opens in a new tab) under Application Settings must be on. With it off, the Extension tab is hidden and a connection can't read your numbers.

Steps

1. Install the extension by following the instructions on the browser extension page (opens in a new tab).
2. Click the extension's icon to open its popup. To use it without an account, enter Take-home pay per hour — plus Your age, Retire at, and Expected growth rate (%) if you want the retirement figure — and choose Save. You're done; skip the rest.
3. To use your real numbers instead, go to Settings (opens in a new tab) and open the Extension tab.
4. On the Connect a browser card, choose Connect a browser. A token appears once — choose Copy. It is not shown again.
5. Back in the extension popup, under Connect your account, paste the token into the box and choose Connect.
6. Open a product page at a supported retailer. A badge like "3.2 hrs of work" appears next to the price — click it to expand the details.

How it works

• The badge shows the price as time to earn it. Expanding it also shows If you invested it instead — the same price compounded forward to your retirement age at your own growth rate — and a link through to the full True Cost Calculator (opens in a new tab).
• Connected to an account, the numbers come from your income and retirement settings, so the badge matches what the app shows. On its own, it uses only what you typed into the popup.
• If your household has no active work income, the badge switches to days of your income instead of hours — the same behavior as the calculator in the app.
• The retirement line only appears when there are years left before your retirement age. Without one, you get the work-time figure alone.
• A connected extension asks PiggySize for your figures at most once a day and keeps them on the device in between, so it keeps working offline and doesn't slow the store page down.
• Retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target are supported today, and more are added over time. The badge appears on product pages only — not on search results, carts, or checkout.

What PiggySize sends and what stays put

• A connected extension receives exactly seven numbers: your after-tax and gross hourly pay, your daily take-home, your retirement growth rate, your target retirement age, and the years between now and it. Nothing else — no balances, bills, debts, goals, family details, name, or email.
• Those figures are held in the extension's own storage on that device for up to 24 hours before it refreshes them, and they are never synced to your browser account or to another device.
• The part of the extension that runs inside a store page never makes a network request and never holds your token. It reads the price, does the arithmetic in your browser, and draws the badge. The price you looked at — and the fact you looked — never reaches PiggySize.
• Your token authorizes one thing: reading those figures. It can't see or change anything else in your account.

Good to know

• Each browser you connect gets its own token. The Connected extensions card lists them with when you connected and when each was last used, and you can connect up to 10 at a time. Revoke cuts one off immediately, and the entry stays in the list marked Revoked so you can see when access ended.
• The token is shown once, at the moment you create it. If you lose it, revoke that entry and connect a browser again.
• Disconnect in the extension popup clears the token and the stored figures from that browser. It doesn't revoke the token on the PiggySize side — do that from the Extension tab if the browser isn't yours anymore.
• Turning the True Cost Calculator switch off in Application Settings stops connected extensions from loading your figures. The extension keeps working if you type your pay into the popup.
• If a product page shows no badge, the store may not be supported, or the page may not be a product page. When the extension finds a price but has no wage to compare it to, it prompts you to set one up rather than guessing.
• Installed manually in Firefox, the extension is removed when Firefox restarts and has to be added again.
• This is a way to look at a price differently, not advice about whether to buy.

FAQ