The Reprograme connection

Reprograme was born from an uncomfortable observation: money is too abstract for the human brain. When you see "R$1,200" on a price tag, you don't feel the real weight of what it represents. It's just a number.

But when you translate that number into hours of your life, the equation changes:

Real cost = Item price ÷ (Monthly take-home income ÷ 220 hours)

The 220 hours come from Brazilian labor law: the CLT, Brazil's labor code, obtains the hourly wage of a monthly-paid employee by dividing the salary by 30 times the daily working hours [21]. With the 44-hour week set by the Constitution [36] spread over six days, the working day is 7 h 20 min, and 30 × 7 h 20 min = 220 hours. Rest days are included in the count — which is why the number exceeds the roughly 190 hours actually worked in a month. It is the same divisor Reprograme uses in its calculation, in every language.

If your take-home income is R$4,400 a month, each hour worked is worth R$20. A pair of sneakers at R$600 costs 30 hours of work. A R$3,000 smartphone costs 150 hours — about two-thirds of a full month of working hours.

The question stops being "how much does it cost?" and becomes "how many hours of my life is this worth?"

That is Reprograme's mission: to help you decide with clarity, not on impulse. Five questions before every purchase, a simple calculation and a suggested waiting period. Reprograme does not forbid the purchase: if, once the waiting period is over, you still need the item and decide to buy it, that is a conscious purchase — and the product exists to support it.

When you understand that money is a technology — not an end in itself — the purchase decision stops being purely emotional and becomes conscious. You don't just spend money. You spend time from your life.