Money Is Life Hours

Every price tag has a second price written on it, in invisible ink: the hours of your life it costs. Dividing a price by your real hourly pay turns any purchase into a time decision. And unlike money, hours do not refill.

The teaching example: say you take home $18 an hour after tax. A $90 jacket costs five hours of work. A $540 phone upgrade costs thirty hours — almost a full week of your working life. Neither answer is "wrong." The point is that the question changes: not "can I afford it?" but "is it worth a week?"

The principle has a second half: your energy for work is a limited resource too. Overtime turns hours into money at a real cost in energy, and energy spent does not come back with the next paycheck. A body can be overdrawn just like an account — it just sends the bill later, as burnout.

In the simulation this is literal. Cards that pay money also show their energy price, and the Energy meter can run out before the money does. Players who treat energy as infinite meet the burnout events that were waiting for them.