Keep Above
Repair it or replace it
Something broke, and there are two ways to have a working one again. This calculator counts each way over its own life — a repair that buys three years against a replacement that lasts twelve — and lands both on a cost per year, which is the only figure the two sides share. No winner is declared; the estimates are yours and so is the call.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
Why does each side cover a different length of time?
Because that is the real shape of the choice — a repair might buy three years while a replacement lasts twelve. Each side is costed over its own life, and the per-year figure is the only one the two sides share. Subtracting whole-life totals over different spans would produce a meaningless number, so this page never does.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry on for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about the trade-in?
Whatever the old one would fetch — trade-in, sale or scrap — comes off the replacement's cost. The up-front figure can't go below zero, but the lifetime total can: a trade-in worth more than the replacement genuinely pulls it down.