Sabbatical Calculator: Can You Afford a Career Break?

How much money do I need for a sabbatical?

Your monthly expenses during the break multiplied by its length, less whatever income you keep earning, and less the growth your remaining investments produce while you are away. A six-month break costs a different amount depending on where you live and how you spend, so the calculator works the figure out from your own numbers rather than a rule of thumb.

It starts from your current net worth and steps forward one year at a time across the horizon you choose. Each year it grows your portfolio by your expected investment return, adds any side income and one-time additions, subtracts a full year of living expenses, and carries the balance into the next year.

What comes back is a trajectory rather than a single end-of-plan number, which matters because a break that looks affordable in total can still run short in a particular year. The year-by-year table is where that shows up.

How long can I take a career break?

Until your portfolio is depleted: the calculator reports that year directly as your runway, and the balance trajectory behind it shows how you get there. If it never reaches zero, the plan sustains itself and the break has no financial end date.

The balance is not the only read-out. Expense coverage is your after-tax income divided by your expenses for that year, and at 100% your income fully funds your lifestyle without touching the principal. Below that, the shortfall is what the portfolio is covering, which is what drains the balance.

Side income and a one-off amount such as a payout or a house sale both extend the runway, and they extend it by different mechanisms: recurring income reduces what the portfolio has to cover every year, while a lump sum raises the balance the return compounds on.

For a shorter exit measured in months rather than years, the quit-my-job calculator runs the same balance forward month by month, without the two tax rates this page applies.

Open the quit-my-job calculator.

Why two tax rates change your runway

Earned money and investment gains are usually taxed differently, so the calculator applies an income rate to your side income and one-time lump sums and a separate gains rate to your investment returns. One blended rate would either over-tax the investments or under-tax the earnings, and either error compounds across every year of the projection.

The gains rate is charged before returns compound into your net worth, so it slows the growth that produces the next year’s figure rather than merely shaving the final one. That is why a break long enough to matter is sensitive to the gains rate in a way a single year never shows.

Every income figure the page reports is after tax, including monthly passive income, side income and expense coverage. One-time additions are the exception: the table shows them before tax, and the projection applies your income rate on the way into your net worth.

Does the calculator adjust for inflation?

Twice, in opposite directions. Your monthly expenses grow with the inflation rate you set as the projection runs, so a plan that looks comfortable today is stress-tested against a rising cost of living rather than a frozen one. The page then divides every figure it reports back to today’s prices, so the numbers stay comparable to what you spend now.

Dividing back stops the two passes double-counting: inflation goes in once inside the loop and comes out again at the end, so the spending column holds level at the figure you typed rather than climbing. The multiplier that turns a row back into the money of its own year sits in the last column of the table.

Recurring side income can optionally be inflation-adjusted, which models work whose rate keeps pace with prices. Left unadjusted it stays flat in future money, so it buys a little less each year, which is the honest default for a fixed contract or a rate you have not renegotiated.

One-time lump sums are never inflation-adjusted. The projection applies each at face value in the year you receive it, because a payout agreed today is worth what it says on the day it arrives, not an inflated version of it. In today’s prices a later lump sum therefore shows lower than the figure you entered, and the gap is the purchasing power it loses while you wait for it.

Sabbatical, mini-retirement, or semi-retirement?

The calculator does not treat them as separate modes. It asks how long a horizon you want to plan for and what income, if any, continues during it, and those two answers are what distinguish the three in practice.

A sabbatical is usually a short horizon with side income set to zero. A mini-retirement is the same shape over a longer one. Semi-retirement means an ongoing reduced income, entered as recurring side income across the horizon you are planning for.

Because the distinction is entirely in the inputs, the same plan can be re-read as a different one by changing the horizon and the side income, without starting again.