Can I Afford to Quit My Job?

How many months of runway do I have after quitting?

Divide what you have by what you spend each month and you have the month count. Say $45,000 against $3,000 a month: that is 15 months by the shortcut, and the full projection agrees, reporting 15 months. The shortcut is not wrong. It is just silent about everything that decides whether the plan works.

Two forces pull on that number in opposite directions. Spending drifts upward with inflation, say 2.5% a year, which shortens the runway. Whatever the balance earns while it sits there, say 3%, lengthens it. Over a break of about a year the two very nearly cancel, which is why the division holds up. Stretch the same plan across three or four years and they stop cancelling, because inflation compounds on a rising number while the return compounds on a falling one.

Here is one month of the projection, in the order it happens:

1. The balance earns one month of your expected return.
2. That month’s spending comes out, higher than last month’s by one month of inflation.
3. Any side income you expect that month goes in.
4. If what is left is above zero, the month counts, and the next one begins.

Annual rates are converted to monthly by compounding rather than by dividing by twelve, so twelve steps add up to exactly the annual figure you typed. Dividing would quietly hand you a slightly larger return than you asked for.

How the side-income ramp changes the answer

Income while you are out is worth far more to a runway than any rate of return, because it reduces what you withdraw rather than adding to what you hold. Switching the same plan to business mode, with income climbing $100 a month toward a ceiling of $2,000, moves the runway from 15 months to 23 months.

The model is a straight line: income starts where you say, climbs by a fixed amount every month, and stops at a ceiling. That is a simplification and worth naming, because real product and freelance income arrives in lumps. What the straight line is good for is comparing plans.

Raising the ceiling above your monthly spending barely helps, because at this ramp speed the income never climbs anywhere near the ceiling before the money is gone. A ceiling you cannot reach in time is worth nothing at all. What you can reach in time is worth everything, which is why the speed of the ramp moves the answer more than its height does:

The calculator also reports a break-even month: the first month your income covers your spending outright. When the ceiling sits above monthly spending, that month exists and the calculator names it. When the ceiling sits below monthly spending, income never fully replaces it and no break-even month is reported, which is the ordinary case rather than a discouraging one. Either way it is precisely what the shortcut of dividing savings by spending can never tell you.

Your point of no return

Your point of no return is the last month your balance still holds the reserve you would need to go back to work, and it always arrives before the money runs out. Say a 15 months runway with a 3-month reserve held back: the point of no return lands in month 12.

Those two dates carry different decisions. The month the money runs out is when the plan ends whether you like it or not. The month the reserve runs out is the last point at which stopping is still a choice you make from a position of some safety: a job search that starts then runs on money you set aside for it, rather than on money you needed for rent.

Set the reserve to the number of months a search would realistically take you. That figure is doing more work in this model than any rate on the page, and it is the one nobody else can supply. In business mode the ramp can push the deadline out, and a plan whose income lifts the balance before the reserve is ever touched has no such deadline at all.

Working backwards from a fixed-length break

If you already know how long you want to be out, the useful question is reversed: not how long the money lasts, but what funding the break costs. Sabbatical mode solves it directly. A 12-month break at $3,000 a month needs $35,831, against the $45,000 in the example, leaving $9,169 spare.

That requirement is slightly below the $36,000 you get from multiplying spending by months, because the money you have not spent yet is still earning while it waits. The figure is solved rather than searched for, so it is the exact balance that lands on zero in the final month, and feeding it back into the projection returns precisely the break you asked for.

Quitting to build something in 2026

Starting a company has rarely been cheaper, and that is not the same as it having become likelier to work. The cost of building the first version of a software product has fallen a long way; the cost of your rent while you look for people who will pay for it has not moved at all. Runway is spent on living, not on tooling, which is why a cheaper build does not buy a longer runway.

Earning something early, even well below what you need to live on, stretches a plan further than any plausible return on the balance and further than cutting the last few hundred from your spending. A ramp that starts in month one and climbs slowly beats a larger number you expect to arrive after the money runs out.

This calculator will not tell you whether the thing you want to build is a good idea. It will tell you what your savings buy you in months, how much of that you can spend before going back becomes hard, and what a realistic early income does to both. Those are the parts that can be checked.

What this calculator does not model

Five things, all left out on purpose so the runway math stays checkable line by line.

• Tax: Nothing here is taxed. Savings are treated as money you can spend and side income as money you keep, which for most people overstates both. Enter figures you have already netted down, or use the lifestyle-change calculator, which applies separate rates to earned income and to investment gains.
• A lumpy income: The ramp is a straight line to a ceiling. Real freelance and product income arrives in bursts: a large first client, then three quiet months. The average may match while the experience does not, and a gap that lands while the balance is low is what actually ends a plan.
• A steady return: The balance earns the same rate every month. Money you might need inside two years is usually not invested in anything that moves much, so this matters less here than in a retirement projection, but a falling market during the months you are selling would still shorten the runway below what this shows.
• Redundancy pay, notice periods and severance: There is no field for a one-off payment landing at the start. Adding it to the savings figure is the right approximation when it arrives on your last day. The lifestyle-change calculator models a lump sum arriving in a named year if the timing matters to you.
• The cost of going back: The point-of-no-return figure assumes returning to work is possible and that the buffer you set is what it takes. How long a search runs, and whether it ends at your old salary, is the assumption doing the most work in this whole model, and it is yours to make.

Three other tools on this site pick up where this one stops. The lifestyle change calculator models a career break with tax on both earned income and investment gains, dated income ranges, and one-off lump sums. The simple drawdown calculator strips the question back to a pot of money falling against rising costs, with no income at all. And if what you are really planning is not a break but an exit, the historical FIRE simulator replays a retirement plan against more than 150 years of real market history.