🌃
Live large now
Best apartment, best restaurants, best clothes. Make life worth it today.
Monthly cashflow
Rent€990
Food€440
Transport€176
Fun€330
Shopping€264
Left over€0
After 20 years
If saved:€0
If invested:€0
← Simulators
Teen tool · Tally
Tally's mirror
Lifestyle Choice Simulator
Three lifestyles. Same salary. Different futures. Slide the salary, slide the years — see exactly what each choice means for the version of you that's 20 years older.
“There's no right lifestyle — only the one you'd be proud of in 20 years. Sometimes that's ‘live large’. Sometimes it's ‘live small’. But choose with your eyes open.” — Tally
— Tally
⚖️
Balanced
Comfortable but not flashy. Enjoy life, save some, invest a bit.
Monthly cashflow
Rent€704
Food€286
Transport€154
Fun€176
Shopping€132
Left over€748
After 20 years
If saved:€220085
If invested:€379637
🐢
Live small, save big
Share rent. Cook home. Buy second-hand. Save aggressively for the future.
Monthly cashflow
Rent€440
Food€176
Transport€110
Fun€88
Shopping€66
Left over€1320
After 20 years
If saved:€388386
If invested:€669948
🧮 The gap
After 20 years, the 'live small' version of you has €669948 more invested than the 'live large' version — on the SAME salary. That gap is the price of the bigger apartment + the nicer restaurants + the more shopping, multiplied by 30 years of compound growth.
Whether that gap is worth it is YOUR choice, not anyone else's.
Tally's three honest truths
- 1. Lifestyle creep is real. When your salary goes up, fixed costs quietly go up too. The trick is to keep them flat and direct the raise to investing.
- 2. 'Small' doesn't mean miserable. A shared apartment with one good friend often makes you HAPPIER than a solo studio. Money isn't the only comfort measure.
- 3. The gap is reversible early. Going 'live large' for 2 years then switching to 'live small' still works. Going 'live large' for 20 years is hard to undo.
⚠️ Educational only · Rough averages, real spending varies · Not a prescription for how to live