How it works

The idea: a price measured in life

A price in money can feel abstract. In working hours, it gains a concrete scale to compare with your priorities.

The calculation uses your monthly take-home income and weekly working hours. An average month is weekly hours × 52 ÷ 12; income divided by that total estimates the hourly value. Price divided by that value estimates working hours, without assuming working days.

The four questions

One question per screen, in the order below. You can go back and change any answer before seeing the result.

1. What are you thinking of buying? In your own words. It does not have to be the exact product name.

2. Why do you want to buy it right now? This is where the trigger shows up: a sale, social media, a stressful day, something that broke, a friend who bought one or an old plan. Recognising the trigger is already half the decision.

3. How much does the item cost? The price of the product, without shipping and without interest.

4. Let’s put this price in your context. Monthly take-home income, weekly working hours and payment in full or installments. Include the hours of the jobs that make up that income; interpret the comparison carefully if income is unrelated to work. Remembered income and hours may be filled in on this browser; you can change them or choose “Forget”.

The result

Once the four questions are answered, Reprograme shows how much the purchase costs in hours of work and how heavily it weighs on your income for the month. The panel changes colour with that weight: blue when it fits the month, amber when it presses, red when it takes half your income or more. The colour conveys weight, never blame.

An example: item at 1,500, income of 1,100/month and 44 h/week of work. The average month has 190.67 hours, and the item costs 260 working hours — 69.33 hours beyond a full month of that income.

The waiting period

Along with the number comes a suggested wait: 1, 7, 15, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days. The step starts from the weight of the purchase on your income and is adjusted by the rest of your answers.

• An impulse trigger — a sale, social media, stress — adds one step.
• A necessity trigger — something that broke, an old plan — removes one step, as long as no impulse trigger was ticked.
• Paying in instalments adds one step.

The adjustments together never move more than one step, and light purchases have a ceiling: below 5% of your monthly income the wait never passes 7 days; below 15%, never past 15. A disproportionate suggestion would feel like punishment — and punishment reprograms nothing.

The technique behind it is old and simple: sleep on it. The wish stays put away until the rush passes, and only then is it looked at again.

The decision: wait, buy or let go

With the number on screen, the choice is yours. There are three paths, and none of them is wrong.

• Wait. Your decision is recorded without email. If you want, you can request a reminder for the end of the period and add price monitoring through the product link, with an alert if the price drops. Emails only go out after you confirm your address through the link we send.
• Buy now. The purchase is recorded, and both the reminder and the price watch are cancelled.
• Let go. The reflection is archived and the amount goes into your total saved — the scoreboard of what you did not buy on impulse.

When the period ends, you come back to the same reflection and decide again. Still wanting the item after the wait is not a failure, yours or Reprograme's — and on its own it does not prove the purchase is necessary: the decision is still yours. There is only one rule — buy out of need, not out of impulse.

What Reprograme knows about you

There is no account or password, and the reflection screens have no ads. To start, just open the first question. You see the result and record your decision without providing an email; recording saves the reflection, with a notice next to the button. If you decide to wait and want a reminder, Reprograme asks for your email and consent then, and a link confirms that the address belongs to you before the first reminder. If this browser remembers your details, income and working hours are filled in at the context question, and email at the reminder request. The tally remains optional and unchecked for every request.

Income and working hours in recorded reflections are encrypted, as is email if you requested a reminder. The draft and the details remembered for the next reflection are kept in plain text in the server session. Nothing is sold, shared or used for advertising, and you can delete everything at any time, in one click. What is kept, for how long and how to delete it is in the privacy policy.

Read the privacy policy

What Reprograme is not

It is not financial advice, it is not an investment and it is not a purchase blocker. It does not know whether that item is good or whether you should buy it. What it does is show the price in a currency nobody usually adds up — your time — and give back the interval you need to decide without hurry.