September 11, 2026

How much does one hour of your life cost — even when you sleep?

Your life has a burn rate. Turn monthly spending into the cost of one calendar hour — including sleep, commute, and Netflix.

Burn rate — cost of one hour of life — TimeCost
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Most people know their salary. Some know their hourly wage. Almost nobody can answer a different question: How much does one hour of my ordinary life cost? Not a working hour. Any hour. While you work. While you commute. While you watch Netflix. While you sleep. That is where TimeCost started. The idea did not come from a finance conference or a spreadsheet. A few friends and I were at a bar, having a beer, talking about money. At some point I asked: “Does anyone here know what one hour of their life costs?” No one did. We know the price of rent, a car, a phone, dinner. We do not know the burn rate of our own lives.

How it is calculated

Say you spend in a month: €2,160 Take a standard 30-day month: 30 × 24 = 720 hours Then divide: €2,160 ÷ 720 = €3 per hour Your current lifestyle spends about €3 every hour on average. While you read this — the meter runs. While you sleep — too. That does not mean €3 is literally debited every hour. It is a way to see spending that usually hides inside one big monthly number.

Why measure spending in hours?

Because €20 alone says little. If your life costs €3 per hour, a €20 purchase equals roughly 6 hours and 40 minutes of your ordinary burn rate. Not good or bad. Just scale. That is TimeCost: not telling you what to buy, but giving you a unit you did not have before.

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