How long will your savings last? Enter your ready cash, what you spend in a typical month, and any income that would keep coming in to see your months of runway and what a 3, 6, or 12 month emergency fund would take.
Runway is how many months your ready cash would last if your income stopped or dropped. The calculator first finds your monthly burn: monthly spending minus any income that keeps coming in.
Then it divides your ready cash by that burn: months of runway = ready cash ÷ (monthly spending − ongoing income). If ongoing income covers your spending, your savings last indefinitely.
The emergency fund targets multiply your monthly burn by 3, 6, and 12 months, so you can see how much cash each target takes and how far you are from it. If ongoing income already covers your spending, the targets use your full monthly spending instead, in case that income stops too.
Three to six months is a common starting point. People with variable income, a single income household, or a specialized job that takes longer to replace often aim for more.
Subtract any income that would keep coming in from your monthly spending to get your monthly burn, then divide your ready cash by that number. For example, 8,000 in savings with $4,000 of spending and ,000 of ongoing income lasts six months.
Money you can reach within days without penalties or selling investments at a bad time: checking, savings, and money market accounts.
Try both. Your current spending shows your honest runway. A lean budget, with only essentials, shows how far you could stretch it in an emergency.
Related reading: Months of runway, Job change on the timeline, Savings rate is the lever. More free calculators at theflan.app/tools.