Income and career · Calculator

True hourly wage.
What your job actually pays per hour.

Your hourly wage at work is not your true hourly wage. Subtract work-related costs and add commute time, and the real number is often 20 to 40% lower. The Vicki Robin framing converts money to "life energy." A $150 dinner at your true hourly wage costs hours of your finite working life. Some purchases pass that test. Many do not.

The question it answersWhat does my job actually pay per hour after work costs?

Privacy: runs in your browser. What you enter stays on your device unless you copy a share link, which puts your inputs in the link.

After-tax estimate uses a 28% combined federal/state/FICAFederal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA)The federal payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. Workers pay 6.2% for Social Security (on wages up to $184,500 in 2026) plus 1.45% for Medicare, and employers match both. Self-employed people pay both halves, 15.3%, as self-employment tax.Full definition approximation. Adjust for your specific bracket.

WORKED EXAMPLE

$60,000 salary. 40-hour weeks. Commute 1 hour each way, 5 days. Work clothes $100/mo. Lunches $200/mo. Decompression spending $150/mo. Childcare to work $800/mo. True annual cost: $15,000. Effective take-home: $28,200. True hours: 40 + 10 = 50/week. True hourly wage: $10.85 instead of $20.77 nominal.

SALARY AND HOURS
Combined federal + state + FICA. 28% is a reasonable middle-income default.
COMMUTE
Gas, parking, tolls, transit pass.
WORK-SPECIFIC SPENDING ($/MONTH)
Convenience food, entertainment to unwind, etc.
PURCHASE TEST
RESULTS
APPARENT vs TRUE HOURLY WAGE

Methodology note: see the "How this tool works" section below.

THE LIFE-ENERGY FRAME
Enter your numbers above.
Methodology and credit
  • The "true hourly wage" framing comes from Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez's Your Money or Your Life (1992). The book popularized the idea of converting money into hours of life energy ×DON'T TRUST, VERIFYClaim: The "life energy" framing of converting purchases to hours of work was popularized by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez in Your Money or Your Life (1992).Verify at: Your Money or Your Life official site ↗ Source 1 in the list belowUpdated edition published in 2018. The book remains in print and is widely cited in the FIRE movement..
  • The effective tax rate input is your blended marginal hit (federal + state + FICA). 28% is a middle-income default; lower-income filers may be closer to 22%, higher 35%+.
  • The work-specific spending lines are the deltas you would not have if you weren't working: childcare needed to enable work, the lunches you wouldn't buy at home, the dry cleaning you wouldn't need without the dress code.
  • Commute hours are real life-energy cost even though unpaid. Including them is the point of the framing.

Not financial advice.

Where to go from here

Read next

Spend Less, Same Things

Groceries, household supplies, gas, subscriptions, personal care.

Explore further
  • Lifestyle InflationWhen income rises, spending tends to rise with it. The mechanism, the math on $50K to $130K careers, and the half-and-half rule that breaks the pattern.
  • Cost Per Use CalculatorEnter a purchase price and expected uses, optionally against an alternative, to see real cost per use.
  • Opportunity Cost CalculatorShows what a one-time or recurring purchase could grow into over 10 to 40 years if invested instead, versus losing value to inflation as cash.

Sources

Verify badges in the text link to these sources. Figures, rates and rules change: check each source’s date before acting on it.

  1. Your Money or Your Life official site ↩

Calculators are educational estimates, not financial advice. Disclosures · How pages are reviewed