Habit cost calculator

It is one multiplication. The price each time, times the times a week, times 52 weeks. $5.50 five times a week is $27.50 a week and $1,430 a year. Ten years is $14,300, with no interest added and no price rises, so the figure is a floor rather than a forecast.

If the habit also takes time, add the minutes. Ten minutes for that coffee, five days a week, is about 43 hours a year. Some habits are expensive in money and cheap in time, like an energy drink. Others cost nothing and eat an evening, like scrolling. Both numbers belong in the decision.

These use the presets on the calculator. They are starting points, not typical prices: what a coffee or a lunch costs depends on the town and the year, so type what you paid last time.

A habit is bought one small payment at a time, and $5.50 never feels like a decision. The year is when it becomes one. Most people who run this are not trying to stop. They want to know whether the habit is worth what it costs once it is counted in a unit they already think in, like a flight home or a month of rent.

Read the figure, then decide on purpose. Keeping the coffee because it is the best ten minutes of the morning is a fair answer. So is keeping three a week instead of five, which takes $572 off the year without giving the habit up.

It does not add interest. What the money might have grown to if invested is a separate question, and any answer to it rests on an assumed rate of return. The latte factor calculator asks that question with the rate left at zero until you choose one.

It also believes your numbers. If the coffee is really four times a week and a pastry twice, the honest input is the one that matches your bank statement, not the one that matches the plan.