We don't judge your habits.
We just do the math.

CompoundVice exists to answer one question: if you invested the money you spend on your daily habits instead, what would you have in 10, 20, or 30 years?

The answer is usually uncomfortable. Not because the habits themselves are so expensive — a $9 pack of cigarettes or a $5 latte feels trivial in the moment. The discomfort comes from compound interest. Time turns small recurring costs into enormous ones.

We built this site to make that math visible, specific, and actionable — without moralizing about it.

Why we built this

Personal finance content tends to fall into two camps: dry spreadsheet tutorials or preachy lifestyle lectures. Neither is particularly useful when you're trying to decide whether to cut something from your budget.

What actually moves the needle is seeing the real number — the compound future value of the money you're spending. Once you know a pack-a-day habit represents $1.2 million over a working lifetime, you have information. What you do with that information is entirely up to you.

CompoundVice provides the information. No judgment, no life coaching, no lectures about your choices.

The methodology

Every projection on this site uses standard compound interest math — the same formula your investment account uses to project growth.

We use 7% as the default rate because it approximates the long-run inflation-adjusted average annual return of broad U.S. equity index funds. You can adjust this in the calculator to model more conservative or aggressive scenarios.

Projections are illustrative — they assume consistent investing at a fixed rate. Real-world returns vary. The point is not precision; it's order of magnitude. The numbers are large enough to be meaningful even if your actual return differs by a few percentage points.

What we recommend

We partner with financial tools and wellness products that we believe genuinely help people redirect spending into savings and investments. Our affiliate partners include micro-investing apps, budgeting tools, subscription trackers, and quit-smoking programs.

We only recommend products we'd use ourselves. Affiliate commissions help fund this site and keep the calculator free. See our full affiliate disclosure.

This is Site #1

CompoundVice is the first in a planned series of compound-cost content sites, each focused on a different category of discretionary spending. The formula — calculate the true compound cost, provide tools to redirect that spending — scales across dozens of niches.

If you're interested in the model or have feedback on the calculator, reach out at contact.