Borrowed Time
The national debt, in person
Free · In‑App Purchases
The U.S. debt now outweighs every ounce of gold ever mined in human history. See it weighed, sourced, and dated — plus four new backdrops and a widget you can pin.
Borrowed Time is a live debt clock for people who still get taxes taken out of their paychecks.
The number is official — pulled straight from the U.S. Treasury's Debt to the Penny dataset and animated between updates at the pace Treasury actually reported. No estimates pulled from thin air, no drama without a citation.
THE BIG BOARD
• Total public debt outstanding, ticking live
• Debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings
• Your share — per person and per household, from Census figures
• The interest burn: what carrying the debt costs this fiscal year, accruing every second
• A 90-day trajectory chart of real Treasury records
A NEW BACKDROP EVERY DAY
The app's look rotates daily through eight original, hand-drawn slices of classic Americana — Route 66 at dusk, a neon roadside diner, a night ballgame, the drive-in, a WPA national-parks poster, Main Street bunting, the space race, and heartland prairie. Same honest number, different view of the country carrying it.
AMERICAN VOICES
A rotating deck pairs defining words from American history and public life with sourced fiscal, civic, and accountability facts. Each card names the speaker and links separately to the quotation record and the underlying source.
WIDGET INCLUDED
A home-screen widget with the live number, the daily backdrop, and an American voice of the day.
FROM THE AMERICAN ARCHIVE
Each month surfaces one public-domain photograph from the national collections — Ansel Adams' Tetons, Lange's Migrant Mother, Earthrise, the March on Washington — with its citation and a link to the holding institution.
No account. No tracking. No data collected. Free with no ads; an optional tip jar supports development and unlocks nothing. Just the scoreboard, its sources, and voices from American history.
Gold Standard: the debt, weighed against what the country owns. See what the entire U.S. gold reserve would cover, how it compares to every ounce ever mined, and how the debt stacks up against the market value of every American corporation. Every figure is sourced from Treasury and Federal Reserve data and dated, because the four numbers update on four different schedules.
Four new backdrops bring the daily rotation to twelve, and you can now pin one: long-press the widget, choose Edit Widget, and pick a scene instead of letting it rotate.
The developer, Justin Patterson, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Justin Patterson
- Size
- 15.8 MB
- Category
- Finance
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Large Tip $9.99
- Medium Tip $4.99
- Small Tip $1.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Justin Patterson