How Many Work Hours Does a Product Cost?
Turn the price of any product into hours of your work, based on your salary. Another way to look at your spending, in Kenyan shillings.
Your Details
A full-time week in Kenya is commonly 45 hours (often spread over six days), roughly 195 hours a month. Adjust to your real schedule.
The Real Cost
Work Hours Needed
65h
≈ 9 days of work (8h day)
💬 In Plain Words
Every hour you work is worth Ksh 461.54. To buy something that costs Ksh 30,000 you have to work 65 hours — the equivalent of 9 days of your time.
Estimate based on your net pay and hours worked. Does not account for overtime, bonuses or irregular income.
Examples: How Many Hours Do Common Products Cost?
With net pay of Ksh 90,000 and 195 hours a month (hourly value of Ksh 461.54), a few common products work out to this many work hours:
| Product | Price | Work Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-range smartphone | Ksh 90,000 | 195h |
| Games console | Ksh 75,000 | 163h |
| Laptop | Ksh 180,000 | 390h |
| Weekend trip (flight + hotel) | Ksh 120,000 | 260h |
The prices in the table are examples only — change the price of the product above to the real value you want to compare.
Where Does This Idea Come From?
The idea of converting spending into life hours comes from the book Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez), which suggests looking at every purchase not in money but in the hours of your life it took to earn that money.
Applying that mindset before a big purchase — instead of just looking at the price — helps you decide whether something is really worth that time of your life.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you work out how many work hours something costs?
- You divide your take-home pay per month by the number of hours you work per month to get your hourly value. Then you divide the price of the product by that hourly value to see how many hours of your work the purchase costs.
- Why see purchases as 'work hours' instead of shillings?
- Turning the price into work hours makes the real cost more concrete — thinking about an amount in shillings is not the same as thinking about 'a whole day at work'. This way of looking at spending comes from the book Your Money or Your Life.
- Should I use gross or net pay?
- Use your net pay (what you actually keep after PAYE, NSSF, SHIF and the Affordable Housing Levy) so the calculation reflects your real purchasing power.