How This Calculator Works
This calculator adds up the time you gave to a romance scam relationship and shows what that time was worth. It uses your own estimates of how much time you spent each week, multiplies them by how long the relationship lasted, and then applies the hourly value you choose. Every result is an estimate, meant to show the true scale of what the criminals took from you, and rough guesses work fine.
How Long the Relationship Lasted
The calculator starts with how long the relationship lasted, in years and months, from your first conversation until today or until contact ended. It turns that into weeks using the average month, which is about 4.35 weeks. For example, a relationship that lasted 1 year and 3 months covers about 65 weeks.
The Five Kinds of Time
The calculator asks about five kinds of time: texting and chat, phone calls, video calls, things you did for the scammer, and time spent thinking about them. For the first three and the last one, you estimate a typical weekday and a typical weekend day. The calculator counts the weekday five times and the weekend day twice to build a typical week. For things you did for the scammer, such as bank trips, buying gift cards, and keeping the relationship secret, you estimate a typical week directly, because those tasks rarely happen every day.
For example, 3 hours of texting on a typical weekday and 5 hours on a typical weekend day add up to 25 hours a week. Over 65 weeks, that comes to about 1,631 hours of texting alone.
How Real It Felt
After you enter time for each kind of contact, the calculator asks how real it felt to you, on a scale of 1 to 10. These ratings are optional, and they do not change the hours or the dollar value. The results show each rating next to its hours, along with your average, because your feelings were real even though the person on the other end was not.
Putting the Hours in Perspective
The results turn your total hours into measures that are easier to picture. The calculator divides your total by 40 to show how many full-time work weeks it equals, and by 24 to show how many full days, around the clock, it equals. It also compares your weekly hours with a full-time job.
When your weekly time is much higher than average, the calculator compares it with the time a typical American spends socializing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that Americans spent an average of 35 minutes a day socializing and communicating in 2024, or about 4.1 hours a week. If you spent 69 hours a week on the relationship, that is about 17 times the national average.
The Value of Your Time
Fraud is not only about stolen money. The law defines fraud as using lies to take anything of value from another person, and your time has value. The calculator multiplies your total hours by the hourly value you choose, which starts at $15 and changes to any amount you enter. For example, 4,500 hours at $15 an hour comes to $67,500. This figure does not measure a mistake you made, because it measures what the criminals took from you.
What These Numbers Don’t Include
These figures are conservative, because many real costs of time are not counted. They leave out the hours you spend recovering after the scam ends, such as reporting the crime to police and banks, attending counseling, and lying awake at night. They also leave out the time family members and friends spend supporting you, and the time you lost with the people who truly care about you.
Your time was part of your life, and no calculator can fully measure what those hours meant to you. These numbers only begin to show how much the criminals truly took.
