How Long Will Your Savings Last?

What "financial runway" actually means

Your financial runway is how many months you could keep paying for your life if your income stopped today. It's your savings divided by what you spend each month. Simple math — but most people never actually run the number, so it stays a vague worry instead of a date on the calendar.

Startups talk about "runway" and "burn rate" the same way, just with a board to answer to. This is the same idea at a smaller scale: a company's runway is a slide in a deck; yours is the rent. When your income is irregular, it's the number that tells you whether you can take the slow month or need to chase the next contract now.

How this calculator works

Enter two numbers — what you've got saved and what you spend in a month — and it gives you your runway in months plus the rough date you'd run out. If you're not sure what you spend, the burn estimator breaks it into categories and adds them up for you.

Then it runs a few what-ifs, because the runway isn't fixed. You'll see what trimming expenses does, and what even a small side gig does, since lowering your net burn stretches the date further than most people expect.

A worked example

That last one is the point worth sitting with: a modest, steady bit of income moves the date much further than an equal one-time cut, because it lowers your burn every single month.

Runway vs. emergency fund

An emergency fund is a target someone tells you to hit — three to six months of expenses, set and forget. Runway is the same idea, but live: it moves every time you spend or save, and it's measured against what you actually burn, not a round number. For irregular income, the live version is the one that matters, because the gap between paychecks is the whole problem.

How much runway is enough?

The common guidance is three to six months as a baseline cushion, and twelve to twenty-four months if you're between contracts, switching careers, or going out on your own. For freelancers I'd lean toward the higher end — not out of caution for its own sake, but because lumpy income means a bad stretch can run longer than you'd guess, and runway is what buys you the room to say no to bad work.

How to extend your runway

There are only two levers: spend less or bring something in. The scenarios above show both. Recurring cuts compound — a subscription you drop saves you every month, not once — and even a small amount of steady income has an outsized effect because it works on your burn rate, which is the denominator of the whole calculation.

Frequently asked questions