Cost per use
25 pointsPrice divided by realistic uses. Under $1 per use scores full marks, over $25 per use scores almost nothing. This is the number that separates a coat you wear all winter from a coat you wear at one wedding.
Buy-it-or-not scorer
Should I buy it?
Six questions, one score. This free tool turns a price tag into two numbers you can actually feel: what each use costs, and how many hours of your life the price is worth. Nothing to install, nothing sent to a server.
Score this purchase
Use whatever currency you spend in — the math works the same.
Be honest, not hopeful. Count the uses you can picture in the next two years, not the ones you can imagine over a lifetime.
Your real hourly wage
A price is easier to judge in hours than in money. But your real wage is not what your contract says — it is what is left after the time and money that only exist because you have a job.
What actually lands in your account, divided into weeks.
The hours you are paid for. Usually 35-40.
Commute, getting ready, the extra half hour nobody logs, work calls at home. This time is spent on the job even though nobody pays for it.
Gas, parking, transit passes, lunches out, coffee runs, work clothes, childcare you would not need otherwise.
Four questions the calculator cannot answer for you
Your result
Fill in the price and the number of uses
The score needs a price and a realistic use count. Everything else sharpens the answer, but those two carry most of it.
Your answers stay in this browser only. No account, no server, no email.
The should I buy it flowchart
If you want the short version, walk these five questions in order. Stop at the first no — that is your answer, and nothing further down the list will rescue it.
1. Do I already own something that does this job?
Yes → stop. Use what you own for two more weeks first. Upgrades bought while the old one still works are how homes fill up.
No — keep going.
2. Can I pay for it with money I already have?
Yes — keep going.
No → stop. Financing turns one price into several. Wait until it is cash.
3. Does the cost per use land under a few dollars?
Yes — keep going.
No → stop, unless it is a genuine occasion item. Otherwise you are paying rental prices to own something.
4. Is the price worth that many hours of my life?
Yes — keep going.
No → stop. Divide the price by your real hourly wage. If the answer is a full work week for something you will use twice, the price tag was never the real cost.
5. Do I know exactly where it will live?
Yes → buy it, and enjoy it without the second-guessing.
No → wait. An item with no home becomes clutter on day one.
The scorer above is the same flowchart with numbers attached, so a strong yes on four questions can carry a soft maybe on the fifth.
Why your real hourly wage is lower than you think
Vicki Robin's Your Money or Your Life made the case in 1992 that money is life energy: you traded hours for it, so every price is a number of hours you cannot get back. The catch is that the hours in that trade are more than the hours on your timesheet.
Getting to work costs time. Getting ready costs time. So does the commute back, the checking of messages at night, and the recovery evening you spend doing nothing because the day drained you. Then there is money that only leaves your account because you have a job: transit, parking, lunches out, work clothes, the coffee that makes the morning survivable.
Subtract both and you get your real hourly wage. For most office workers it lands 30-45% below the number on the payslip — which means most prices cost noticeably more hours than they appear to.
A worked example
- Take-home pay
- $962 per week
- Paid hours
- 40 per week
- Wage on paper
- $24.04 per hour
- Commute + getting ready
- 9 hours per week
- Work-only spending
- $261 per week
- Real wage
- $14.30 per hour
Same job, same payslip, 41% less per hour. A $200 purchase is not 8 hours of work — it is 14. Run your own numbers in the tool above and the gap is usually wider than you expected.
How the score works
One hundred points, six dimensions. Nothing here is a mystery — you can recompute it on paper if you disagree with the weights.
Price in life hours
20 pointsPrice divided by your real hourly wage. Under an hour is free-feeling; a full work week for one object almost never survives contact with hindsight.
Not a duplicate
15 pointsOwning a working version of the same thing is the most common reason a purchase becomes clutter within a month.
Money source
15 pointsCash you will not miss scores full marks. Credit and buy-now-pay-later score zero, and also cap the total at 49.
How long you waited
15 pointsA want that survived months is a different animal from one that was born in an ad twenty minutes ago. Time is the cheapest filter there is.
It has a home
10 pointsEvery object needs somewhere to be. An item with no assigned spot starts life as clutter, no matter how good the deal was.
Should I buy it: FAQ
How does the should I buy it score work?
It splits 100 points across six things: cost per use (25), the price measured in hours of your real wage (20), whether you already own something similar (15), where the money is coming from (15), how long you have wanted it (15), and whether you know where it will live (10). Above 75 is a buy, 55-74 means fix your weakest answer first, 35-54 means wait, and below 35 means the honest answer is no.
What is a good cost per use?
For things you use in ordinary life, under $1 per use is excellent and anything over $10 per use deserves a second look. Occasion items follow a different scale — a suit worn five times at $40 per wear is normal and fine. The mistake is measuring an occasion item with an everyday ruler.
Is cost per use the same as cost per wear?
Same formula, different word. Cost per wear is the clothing version. If you are pricing a garment, use the cost per wear calculator, which also separates everyday pieces from occasion pieces and runs the 30-wear test.
It is on sale. Does that change the answer?
Only through the price field. A discount lowers cost per use and lowers the hours it costs you, and the score moves accordingly. What a discount never changes is whether you already own one, whether you have somewhere to put it, or whether you wanted it before you saw the tag. Those three carry 40 of the 100 points for exactly that reason.
How long should I wait before buying something?
Thirty days for anything above a trivial amount is the rule most people converge on, and this tool agrees: wanting something for months earns full points, wanting it since this morning earns none. Put it on a list, date it, and revisit. The items that survive a month are worth buying; the rest quietly answer the question for you.
Do you store my answers?
No. Everything stays in your own browser through local storage. There is no account, no server copy, and no email. Clear your browser data and it is gone.
Keep going
Deciding not to buy is the cheap half. Here is what handles the things already in the house: