Cost of working calculator
Most people know what they earn. Very few know what it costs to keep earning. This page walks through the main costs of working – then lets you plug everything into the Real Cost Simulator to see the true bottom line.
1. Housing tied to your job
If you live in an expensive city mainly because your job is there, part of your rent or mortgage is really a cost of employment. In the simulator you can:
- Enter your monthly rent or mortgage (your share)
- Choose whether bills are included
- Compare with "typical" local housing costs based on country and city type
2. Commute time and money
Your commute has both a cash cost and a time cost. The simulator turns your daily commute minutes into hours per month, and estimates typical costs for public transport or driving in your region. You can override this with your exact monthly commute spend.
3. Children and dependants
Work often drives childcare and family expenses: nursery, after‑school clubs, tutors, and support for relatives. You can quickly estimate:
- How many children you have and their age band
- Typical child‑related costs by region
- How much of your income is effectively tied to being able to work
4. Health, debt and "maintenance" spending
This includes anything you wouldn't need (or wouldn't need as much of) if you weren't working this job in this way:
- Therapy and coaching to cope with stress or burnout
- Health costs, medication, dental and vision care
- Debt repayments and student loans from "getting qualified"
- Clothes, cosmetics, grooming, socialising and "little treats" needed to stay presentable and upright
5. See your "hour of freedom"
When you subtract all these costs from your income, what's left is what you truly keep. Dividing that by your total job hours gives your hour of freedom: the amount of money you have left per hour of life spent working and commuting.
The simulator shows this as a simple number, plus a visual breakdown of where your money goes each month and how changes – like going remote or moving city – would impact it.