See what a purchase really costs in your time

The True Cost Calculator turns a price into something more real than a dollar amount: how many hours of your work it costs, based on your actual after-tax hourly wage.

Steps

1. Go to True Cost Calculator (opens in a new tab) in the main menu, or use the True Cost Calculator button above the Scenario Tester on the Scenario Tester (opens in a new tab) page.
2. Under What does it cost?, enter the price of anything you're considering buying.
3. The results appear underneath as three cards: the time it takes to earn it (for example, "6.4 hrs"), what that money could grow to by retirement if you invested it instead, and what share of one month's take-home pay it represents.
4. Under those, three smaller cards show the numbers behind the math — what you earn per hour before taxes, what you keep after taxes, and your effective tax rate.

How the projection handles it

• Your hourly wage comes from your active labor income (job or self-employment) on the Income (opens in a new tab) page: your after-tax (take-home) pay divided by your hours worked. Taxes are already baked into that take-home number, so there are no separate tax inputs to fill in.
• If your household has no active labor income — for example, you're retired and living on pensions, Social Security, investment income, or other benefits — the calculator switches modes and shows the price as days of your income instead of hours, based on your average net income per day.
• The "if you invested it instead" figure compounds the price forward using the growth rate and retirement age from your own Retirement (opens in a new tab) settings — not a generic market assumption. It's hidden once you've reached that retirement age.
• If no income is entered at all, the calculator asks you to add income first instead of showing a result.
• Each bill on the Bills (opens in a new tab) page also shows a small True cost: ~X hrs line inside the bill's card, using the same period as the amount shown — so if you're viewing bills per month, the time is per month too. In the retiree mode it shows days of income instead.

Good to know

• This is a per-user setting. Turn it on or off from Settings (opens in a new tab) under Application Settings → True Cost Calculator. It's on by default.
• Only the account owner and spouse can turn the feature on or off, and only they see the menu link and the per-bill time line — child accounts don't.
• This tool converts a price to time using your current income. It doesn't project future wage growth, opportunity cost, or investment returns — it's a snapshot, not a forecast.
• Nothing here is financial advice. It's meant to help you think about a purchase in a different way, not tell you what to buy.

FAQ