An open-source clock

Turn your savings into time.

The Freedom Clock is a calm little screen for your desk. No prices, no notifications, no badge counters. It just sits there and quietly answers one question: how much of your life have you already bought back?

Try the calculator → See how it's built
Open source ~$30 in parts No cloud No account
Minutes to assemble No coding required Fully yours. No sign-up, no email, no phone, no cloud.
The Freedom Clock — a small orange e-ink display sitting on a stone on a wooden desk, showing freedom time
The actual device. ~$30 in parts.
The question this answers

Your savings are a number.
What if they were a feeling?

Most money apps answer the wrong question. They show you what you have. Your balance, your return, your net worth. But you don't wake up thinking about your net worth. You wake up wondering whether today is a day you chose, or a day that was chosen for you.

The Freedom Clock answers the question your gut is actually asking: if I stopped earning tomorrow, how long could I keep living the life I want? The answer shows up in years and months, not dollars. It's on your desk every morning, without you opening anything.

What it shows

Three quiet
signals.

The main screen is intentionally simple, so you can read it in one glance.

01

Freedom time

How long your savings could carry your chosen lifestyle, in human units. Not dollars. Not blocks. Time.

Freedom time 02y 02m 2w
02

Lifetime left

A quiet memento mori. Even if the portfolio keeps growing, this clock keeps moving. Are you using the time well?

Lifetime left 48y 08m 1w
03

Freedom coverage

What percentage of the life you have left is already financially covered. A single number that closes the gap, week by week.

Coverage 05 %
Try it now

Your freedom,
on screen.

All numbers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

USD
Anything you'd actually live off. Cash, index funds, Bitcoin, all of the above.
USD / mo
What it costs to live the life you actually want, not just to survive.
% / yr
Expected annual nominal return.
% / yr
Expected annual rate.
Sell a slice of the portfolio each month to cover your spend. Principal slowly drains.
94%
Your expected freedom time
Expected lifetime left
Freedom
coverage
Real device. Real calculation. No cloud.
Pass it on

What's your
freedom time?

Your number stayed in your browser, and it should stay yours. The question, though, is worth passing on. So share the idea, not the digits.

Now it whispers too
"

The trick is not to spend a lifetime trying to outrun the clock that's already on your desk.

· Freedom Clock

Between glances at your freedom number, the screen surfaces a short line worth thinking about. From Seneca, Perkins, Housel, Naval, and many others.

The point of it

Calm,
by design.

It's not a dashboard or a notification. It's a small personal object that lives in your peripheral vision and asks one good question whenever you happen to look at it.

01

Slow refresh

Updates in cadence with your life, not the market. Days, not seconds. Battery lasts months.

02

No app

No phone, no login, no doom-scroll. You glance at it, the way you'd glance at a window.

03

Local only

Runs on your home Wi-Fi. Numbers never leave the room. Your finances are no one's business.

04

Yours to change

Open hardware, open code, MIT licensed. Re-skin it, re-purpose it, or build one as a gift for someone you love.

Build it yourself

An afternoon.
Maybe a coffee.

You don't need to be a developer. You don't need to solder. The hard parts (the software, the math, the layout) are already done. You just plug a few things together.

01
Order the parts

One small e-ink board, a battery, a USB-C cable. Total around $30 from your favourite electronics shop.

02
Install the software

Download a file from the GitHub page, plug the board into your computer, hit upload in the Arduino IDE. One click.

03
Enter your numbers

Open the device's setup page on your phone. Type in what you save and what you spend. Save.

04
Put it on your desk

Set it next to your monitor, your coffee, your reading chair. Glance at it every now and then. Notice what changes.

What you need

around $30
Heltec Vision Master E290~$22
3.7V Li-Po battery, ~1000mAh~$5
USB-C cable~$3
A stand of your choice$0
Honest questions

Things people
ask first.

The Freedom Clock is opinionated. These are the most common questions, answered the way I'd answer a friend who asked over coffee.

Do I need to own Bitcoin to use this?+
No. Today the clock works with either cash (USD) or Bitcoin, not yet a mix of the two. You enter a single portfolio value and the device translates it into time. Bitcoin was the original spark, but the device cares about freedom, not the asset class. Support for combinations and other assets is on the way.
Is it accurate? It feels like a big number to trust.+
It's a thoughtful estimate, not a guarantee. That's why there's a Details screen that shows every assumption behind the calculation — real return, spend rate, and whether your portfolio is self-sustaining. Change one of the inputs and the number adapts. The point isn't precision. It's the conversation it starts.
What does FOREVER mean?+
When your portfolio's real annual return (growth minus inflation) covers your annual spend without touching the principal, your money lasts indefinitely. At that point the clock shows FOREVER and coverage shows INF. You can see exactly why in the Details screen — if your "real return" percentage exceeds your "need rate" percentage, you've crossed that line.
Where does my data go?+
Nowhere. The device runs on your local Wi-Fi, talking only to a small service on your home network (or directly to itself). No accounts, no cloud, no analytics. Even this calculator runs entirely in your browser. The only external call is to CoinGecko for a live BTC price if you switch to BTC mode.
I can't code. Can I still build it?+
Yes. The hard parts are done. You install one program (the Arduino IDE), open a file, and click upload. The README walks you through it in plain English, and there's a Discord if you get stuck.
Why not just an app on my phone?+
Because phones are noisy. The Freedom Clock is meant to be glance-able and unobtrusive: a physical reminder, not another notification fighting for your attention. The medium is the message.
What's the motivational quote thing?+
Between updates of your freedom number, the screen rotates a small library of short lines worth re-reading: on time, on attention, on what enough looks like. You can edit the list, replace it with your own, or turn it off entirely.

Your time is the only currency that doesn't compound.

Get the code on GitHub → Read the story