What is your time worth?

Introduction

The price tag on something tells you the number. It does not tell you what that number actually represents – how much of your working life you exchanged for it, or will exchange for it.

Converting prices into working time does something that pound amounts alone cannot: it makes the cost feel real. A £120 pair of trainers sounds like a number. A £120 pair of trainers at a £35,000 salary costs just under five hours of your working life – more than half a working day, before tax. After tax, it is closer to seven hours. The trainers might still be worth it. But knowing what you are trading makes the decision a different kind of decision.

This calculator does three things. It calculates your hourly, daily and monthly rate from your annual salary. It shows the time cost of twelve common purchases – from a daily coffee to a family holiday to a house deposit. And it lets you add your own purchases to see what anything costs in working time at your specific rate.

The gross versus net toggle matters. Your gross hourly rate is what you earn. Your net hourly rate is what you keep. The difference – the amount going to income tax and National Insurance – means that the time cost of every purchase is higher than the gross figure suggests. Switching to net gives the more honest number.

How to use this calculator

Enter your annual salary in the box at the top. The hourly, daily and monthly rates update immediately.

Adjust the hours per week slider if your working week differs from the standard 37 hours. The hourly rate changes with the hours – working more hours for the same salary reduces your effective hourly rate.

Toggle between gross and net using the buttons below the hours slider. Gross shows your rate before tax and National Insurance. Net applies a 2025/26 approximation of income tax and NI to show your take-home rate. The net figure is the more meaningful one for purchase comparisons – you cannot spend money before it has been taxed.

Edit any purchase price in the list to match your actual costs – everyone’s trainers, coffee and car costs are different. The working time figure updates as you type.

Add your own purchases using the field at the bottom of the list. Type the name, enter the price, and click Add. The time cost appears immediately alongside it.

Frequently asked questions

How is the hourly rate calculated?

The calculator divides your annual salary by the number of working hours in a year. Working hours per year = hours per week × 52 weeks. At 37 hours per week, that is 1,924 working hours per year. A £35,000 salary divided by 1,924 hours gives an hourly rate of approximately £18.19 gross.

The net calculation applies an approximation of 2025/26 income tax rates (20% on income between £12,570 and £50,270, 40% above that) and National Insurance (8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, 2% above). The result is an estimated take-home hourly rate. It is an approximation – your actual take-home depends on your tax code, pension contributions, student loan and other deductions.

Should I use gross or net for the time calculations?

Net is the more honest comparison for purchases. You cannot spend gross salary – it has not arrived in your bank account. The money you are trading for a purchase is after-tax money, which means the time cost of every purchase is higher than the gross figure suggests.

At a £35,000 salary, the gross hourly rate is approximately £18.19. The net hourly rate is approximately £13.10 (after basic rate tax and NI). A £120 pair of trainers costs 6.6 hours gross or 9.2 hours net – almost a full working day in net terms. The net figure is what you are actually exchanging.

Why does working more hours reduce my effective rate?

If you work 50 hours per week on a £35,000 salary, your effective hourly rate is lower than if you work 37 hours on the same salary – because the same annual amount is now spread across more hours. This is the calculation that makes overtime, long working cultures and certain salaried roles look different when expressed as an hourly rate. A £50,000 salary with regular 55-hour weeks produces a lower hourly rate than a £40,000 salary with a strict 37-hour week.

What is the most surprising result for most salaries?

The car and the holiday tend to produce the numbers that stop people. At a median UK salary of approximately £35,000 gross, a new car at the average transaction price of £28,000 costs roughly 1,543 gross hours – more than 41 weeks of working time, or almost ten months of gross salary. After tax, the figure is closer to 14 months of take-home pay, because you are buying the car with net income.

A week’s family holiday at £3,500 costs approximately 193 gross hours at a £35,000 salary – five weeks of working time, or over a month after tax. Most people feel their holiday is worth a month of working time. But knowing the figure is different from not knowing it.

What does the daily coffee calculation show?

A £4 coffee at a £35,000 gross salary costs approximately 13 minutes of work. That sounds small. Bought every working day, 250 days per year, the same coffee costs approximately 55 hours per year – more than a full working week, or around £1,000. Whether that is a reasonable use of 55 hours of working time is a personal question. But 55 hours is a different number to 250 coffees.

How does this compare to the “latte factor” argument?

The latte factor – the idea that small daily purchases are the primary obstacle to financial progress – is a useful illustration but an imperfect argument. Cutting a daily £4 coffee saves approximately £1,000 per year, which is meaningful but not transformative. The more useful insight from this calculator is not “stop buying coffee” but rather “understand what different purchases actually cost in working time, and decide whether the trade feels right.”

A £4 coffee that you enjoy every morning may be worth 13 minutes of work. An £80 gym membership you use twice a month costs roughly three hours of work for each visit – which may or may not feel like a fair exchange depending on how much you value those visits.

The calculator is not an argument for spending less. It is a tool for making spending decisions with a clearer sense of what is being exchanged.

Can I use this for a daily or hourly rate rather than a salary?

Yes – if you work on a day rate or hourly rate, multiply up to an approximate annual equivalent and enter that. For a day rate: multiply by the number of days you work per year (typically 220 to 230 for a full-time contractor). For an hourly rate: multiply by hours per week and then by 52. The calculator then works in the same way.

Why does the calculator use 52 weeks rather than 48?

The calculator uses 52 weeks as the divisor, which gives a gross hourly rate based on working weeks only. It does not deduct holiday weeks, sick days or bank holidays. This means the hourly rate shown is the rate implied by the salary if you worked every week of the year – which is technically the gross hourly equivalent of the annual figure.

If you want to adjust for actual working weeks (for example, 46 weeks after deducting six weeks of holiday and bank holidays), reduce the effective hours per week – entering 34 hours instead of 37 at 46 effective weeks produces a similar result to the full-year calculation.

What is the most useful purchase to add as a custom item?

The most commonly added custom purchases tend to be rent or mortgage payments (converting a monthly housing cost into working days is often illuminating – many people discover they work seven to ten days per month purely to pay for housing), a specific item under consideration for purchase, and annual costs like car insurance or a holiday broken into monthly terms.

The custom field is also useful for comparing two purchases directly – entering both and comparing the time figures side by side.

The information on this site is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing on Be More Peter constitutes financial advice, and nothing should be treated as such. The calculators, articles and tools on this site are designed to help you understand financial concepts and run indicative numbers - they are not a substitute for professional advice tailored to your specific circumstances. Before making any financial decision - including decisions about mortgages, pensions, investments, savings or insurance — you should seek independent financial advice from a qualified adviser who is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Calculator results are estimates based on the information you enter and the assumptions built into the tool. They are illustrative only and should not be relied upon as accurate projections. Rates, thresholds and rules change regularly - always verify figures with an appropriate professional or official source before acting on them. Be More Peter is not authorised or regulated by the FCA. The content on this site does not constitute a financial promotion.

Related tools and posts

• Take-home pay calculator – see your exact net salary after all deductions
• Monthly budget calculator – plan where all your working time goes each month
• Subscription creep calculator – see recurring costs in annual terms
• Compound interest calculator – what saved working time produces over decades
• The real cost of your car – total car ownership cost beyond the purchase price
• Money lessons I learnt the hard way – the purchases that felt different once the numbers were clear