Everything Has a Cost. You Choose Which Ones to Pay.
We quantify the financial, psychological, and opportunity trade-offs of your vices — so you can decide with clarity.
We're not here to make you quit. We're here to make sure you chose — not just defaulted.
Six breakdowns. Same framework — financial, psychological, and opportunity cost — applied to each habit with full honesty. Pick the one you've been avoiding examining.
Cigarettes, vaping, pouches, dip. One of the most expensive habits per dollar of effect — and one of the hardest to see clearly from inside it.
View breakdown →The socially acceptable one. Coffee, energy drinks, pre-workout. The costs are subtle — sleep debt, dependency, anxiety — but they compound.
View breakdown →Legal in many places. Normalized almost everywhere. Still has real costs: motivation, memory, and money — especially at daily use.
View breakdown →The most culturally embedded vice on this list. The costs are wide: financial, relational, physiological, professional — and easy to rationalize.
View breakdown →We don't moralize. We calculate. Whether recreational or habitual, these carry some of the highest opportunity costs in the table.
View breakdown →The only vice engineered by teams of people whose job was to make it harder to stop. The dependency is real. The cost is mostly invisible — until you add up the hours.
View breakdown →Every calculator and every article on this site runs through the same three lenses. Because the full price is never just the price tag.
The cash leaving your account. Daily spend, annualized cost, and what that money could be doing instead.
Dependency patterns, mood effects, cognitive load, anxiety, and the mental energy required to maintain the habit.
Time, energy, and capital redirected away from things you actually want. The invisible cost most people never calculate.
No signup. No judgment. Just clarity.
See the real annual cost — and where that money could go instead.
Essays and frameworks for people who want to understand their habits — not just quit them.
Coffee feels cheap until you add it up. Then add the sleep debt. Then add the anxiety. Here's what the full invoice looks like.
Cannabis · MotivationNot a scare piece. A real look at the research on motivation, working memory, and what "functional use" means in practice.
FrameworkThe binary of "using" vs. "clean" misses the point. Clarity about cost is what actually changes behavior — not shame.
NicotineBeyond the health stats you've already tuned out — what does a pack-a-day habit actually cost you in capital and time over a decade?
AlcoholThe financial cost of alcohol is obvious. The 18–36 hours of reduced cognitive output after drinking? That never shows up on the receipt.
Screen Time · AttentionSocial media isn't free. You're paying with attention, mood, and hours. Here's what that costs — in dollars, in days, and in what you're not building.
We're not anti-vice. We're anti-default. The difference is whether you chose it or just never questioned it.— The ViceBudget principle
ViceBudget is a harm-reduction resource. We're not anti-vice — we're anti-default. Every page on this site applies the same three-cost framework: financial, psychological, and opportunity. No moralizing, no scare tactics, no abstinence agenda.
We're not doctors, therapists, or financial advisors. We're people who think clearly about trade-offs and believe you deserve the same clarity about your habits that you'd apply to any other significant recurring expense in your life.