Twenty a month forever sounds harmless. With compounding over decades, it is tens of thousands in lost future wealth. Sanity check before the next sign-up.
£20/mo for 15 years at % real
Material lifetime cost. Worth pausing to confirm it earns its place.
Illustrative figures only. The model assumes constant monthly spend; most subscriptions raise prices yearly, which makes the true lifetime cost higher. For your specific situation, consult a qualified adviser.
Worth runs this maths on every subscription in your life and surfaces the ones that quietly compound into real money. Join the waitlist.
Real return after inflation is what matters because the comparison is future wealth today's money. Six per cent real is consistent with long-term equity index returns of roughly ten per cent minus three per cent inflation. Using nominal numbers overstates the lifetime cost.
Most subscriptions raise prices yearly. The calculator assumes a constant monthly amount, so the result is an underestimate. A gym or streaming service that keeps raising fees costs more than the model shows.
Less so. The compounding cost grows with how long the spend repeats, so a single one-off is just the cash plus its forgone growth, not a recurring drag. Use this calculator for things that auto-renew. For one-off purchases, the opportunity cost is straightforward: amount times (1 plus real return) to the years.
Use it as a sanity check before signing up, and once a year for things you already pay. Cancel what is not worth the lifetime number. Keep what is. The number is not an argument against spending, it is an argument against unexamined recurring spending.