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Daily build note · October 15, 2026

Payback Clock

Dial in a tool or subscription cost, hours saved per week, and your loaded hourly value; watch a clock fill to break-even days with annual ROI and a copyable payback memo.

AI Ops / Personal Utilities Interactive demo live Static HTML/CSS/JS

What shipped

Payback Clock is a buy-vs-build clock for tools, seats, and retainers. Name the item, pick Monthly or One-time (with optional ongoing monthly upkeep), enter hours saved per week and a loaded hourly value, and a 365-day ring fills to the break-even day. Weekly value is hours × $/hr. Monthly tools use days to earn back one month's fee (monthly ÷ weekly × 7); one-time buys use days to earn back the upfront price after netting out ongoing upkeep. Secondary cards show weekly / annual savings, annual cost, net, ROI %, months to recoup the year (or net weekly for one-time), and a CT break-even date. Verdict chips: EMPTY, NO VALUE, NEVER, SAME DAY, FAST, SOLID, SLOW, LONG. Copy a markdown payback memo with an America/Chicago timestamp. State saves under payback-clock-v1.

How to try

  • The demo opens on Copilot seat: $19/mo, 3 h/wk at $75/hr → $225/wk, 0.6 days to earn back the month, SAME DAY, ~5,032% year-one ROI.
  • Load Zapier Pro or AI receptionist for other monthly seats; New laptop for a $2,200 one-time buy; VA retainer for a heavier monthly spend.
  • Flip to One-time and dial up Ongoing / mo until the clock flips to NEVER — that's when upkeep eats the weekly savings.
  • Hit Copy memo for a markdown receipt you can paste into a Slack thread or a buy decision. Save locally keeps the inputs across reloads.

Why this (vs neighbors)

Meeting Burn Rate prices the cost of a meeting. Cost of Delay prices waiting. Payback Clock answers the other half of the buy decision: how many days of saved time until this tool has paid for itself. It's a deliberate AI-ops / personal-utilities toy after Tip Pool (local business) and Margin Math (civic).

Scope trim

No billing APIs, no tax, no multi-year NPV beyond simple annual ROI, no shareable URL state. Hours saved and loaded hourly value are your estimates — the clock is only as honest as those inputs.

Limitations

  • Illustrative arithmetic, not financial advice. Real adoption curves, switching costs, and taxes are out of scope.
  • Monthly mode treats the first month as the stake; annual ROI still uses cost × 12. If monthly value is less than the fee, the verdict is NEVER even if days-to-month would look short on paper.
  • One-time buys with ongoing upkeep net that upkeep out of weekly value before counting days — if upkeep ≥ weekly savings, the clock reads Never.

Suggested next steps

  1. Add a team size multiplier (N seats × hours) and a confidence slider that widens the break-even band.
  2. Add a simple 3-year NPV toggle with a discount rate for capital purchases.
  3. Encode the inputs in a shareable URL so a buy memo can be linked from a Slack thread.