Subscription Hours Reframe — what Netflix actually costs you

Recurring charges, expressed as the working hours they cost you. Punch in your hourly rate and your subscriptions, and Netflix stops being ₹649/month and starts being 2.4 hours of your life every month. A small mental-model shift, not a budgeting app.

Role

Designer · Frontend Developer

Timeline

1 weekend

Team

1 person

Scope

Frontend, Mental-model micro-tool

Why this exists

Budgeting apps tell you how much money you spend. They never tell you what you traded for it. ₹649 doesn't feel like anything. "2.4 hours of work" feels like something specific.

The trick is not in the math — it's in the unit. Replace the rupee with the hour, and the same number lands differently in the brain.

What it does

Two inputs:

Your hourly rate (or monthly salary ÷ working hours).
Your subscriptions, with monthly cost.

One output: each subscription as the number of working hours it costs you, every month, forever, until you cancel it. Sum at the bottom. The total reads like "you spend 14 hours a month working to keep your subscriptions running" instead of "₹4,200/month."

A monthly counter for each subscription showing cumulative hours-paid since the day you signed up. Helps decide what to cancel.

How it's built

Frontend-only — no backend, no signup, no analytics. Inputs persist in localStorage. The whole thing fits in one Next.js page, deploys static, ships in a weekend.

The math is one line. The friction is the design — the unit-swap has to be the headline interaction, not buried behind a settings toggle.

What it isn't

Not a budgeting tool. Doesn't connect to your bank. Doesn't track spending. Doesn't try to be Mint.

The point is one shift in mental model. The tool either causes that shift or it doesn't — there's nothing more to do.

Why it doesn't exist yet

Honestly — laziness. The math is trivial; the design is half a day. I haven't shipped it because nothing is forcing me to. Marking it as the next weekend project here so I'm publicly accountable.