Estimated Runtime: ~10 minutes
Tone: Calm, practical, reassuring — like a financial advisor who also cares
about your wellbeing
Let me ask you something. How many months can you sustain your job search at
your current spending level?
If you can't answer that question with a specific number — not a guess, not "a
few months," but an actual number — then you're making every career decision
from a place of anxiety instead of strategy.
And here's why that matters: anxiety makes you desperate. Desperation makes you
accept offers you shouldn't. And accepting the wrong role puts you right back in
this position twelve to eighteen months from now.
Today, we're going to do something that sounds boring but is actually one of the
most powerful exercises in this entire course. We're going to do the math. We're
going to calculate your exact financial runway. And once you know your number,
you're going to feel something you probably haven't felt in a while — control.
Let me tell you what I see all the time. Someone gets laid off. They have
savings. They have a severance package. By any rational measure, they're okay
for several months.
But they don't feel okay. They feel panicked. So what do they do? They
immediately start applying to everything. They rush through interviews. They
accept the first offer that comes in — often at less money, in a worse culture,
doing work they're not excited about.
Three months later, they're looking again. And this time they're in a weaker
position because they've added a short tenure to their resume.
The irony is, they had the runway. They had the time to be strategic. They just
didn't know it because they never sat down and calculated it.
Financial panic is not the same as financial crisis. Financial crisis is when
you genuinely cannot pay your bills next month. That's a real emergency and
requires immediate action.
Financial panic is the emotional response to uncertainty. It's the knot in your
stomach when you check your bank account. And the cure for uncertainty isn't
more money — it's more information.
That's what the Runway Calculator gives you. Information. Clear, specific,
mathematical information that turns overwhelming anxiety into a manageable
planning problem.
Here's the exercise. It takes about thirty minutes, and it's the most important
thirty minutes you'll spend this week.
Step one: calculate your monthly burn rate. I mean everything. Housing.
Utilities. Food. Transportation. Insurance. Debt payments. Childcare if
applicable. Subscriptions. Personal expenses. All of it.
Don't estimate. Don't round. Pull up your bank statements and credit card
records for the last three months and get the real number. Most people are
surprised by this. They think they spend less than they actually do. Getting the
real number matters.
Step two: calculate your available reserves. This is your savings, plus any
severance or PTO payout you're receiving, plus any investment accounts you'd be
willing to tap as a last resort.
Step three: divide. Total reserves divided by monthly burn rate equals your
runway in months. That's your number.
Now here's where it gets interesting. Step four is to calculate a
reduced-spending runway. Look at your burn rate and ask: what could I cut or
reduce during this search period without meaningful suffering?
I'm not talking about living on ramen. I'm talking about pausing retirement
contributions for a few months. Canceling subscriptions you don't use. Cooking
at home more. Reducing discretionary spending.
When you do this math, most people discover they have two to four more months of
runway than they thought. And those extra months are the difference between a
desperate search and a strategic one.
Step five: calculate your minimum viable income. This is the monthly amount you
would need to earn — through freelancing, consulting, contract work, or any
bridge income — to sustain your search indefinitely. It's not a salary. It's the
minimum you need to cover expenses month to month so your savings stop
shrinking.
When you know this number, you unlock an important option: the bridge income
plan.
A bridge income is exactly what it sounds like — it bridges the gap between your
last paycheck and your next career move. And it's not a sign of failure. It's a
strategic tool.
Think about it this way. If your runway is four months and your search takes
six, you've got a two-month gap. You can either panic and accept a mediocre
offer at month three, or you can earn enough bridge income to extend your runway
and keep searching for the right fit. Here's what bridge income can look like.
If you're an experienced professional, the most natural bridge is consulting or
fractional work. You take your same expertise — the same stuff companies are
willing to hire you full-time for — and you offer it as a service. Project-based
work. Part-time advisory roles. Interim leadership positions. Companies need
this kind of help, and you might be surprised how much they'll pay for it.
The next tier is skills-based work. Teaching. Coaching. Writing. Content
creation. If you know things, people will pay you to share them. This has the
added benefit of building your visibility and network in ways that directly
support your search.
And if neither of those works in your timeline, there's flexible gig work.
Delivery services. Temporary assignments through staffing agencies. Short-term
contracts. These aren't glamorous, but they accomplish the mission — they buy
you time.
Here's the key question to ask about any bridge income option: does it leave me
enough time and energy to continue my real search? If a bridge job takes fifty
hours a week and leaves you exhausted, it's not a bridge — it's a detour. The
best bridge income takes twenty hours a week or less and keeps you in the game.
Let me summarize what you now have.
The Runway Calculator gives you a specific number — how many months you can
search at your current spending. The reduced-spending version shows you how to
extend that runway without suffering. And the minimum viable income calculation
shows you exactly how much bridge income you'd need to sustain your search
indefinitely.
These three numbers transform your search from a race against the clock into a
strategic campaign with clear boundaries.
And here's the mindset shift I want you to make. Your runway is not a countdown
to disaster. It's a resource you manage. Just like a pilot manages fuel. They
don't panic when the needle drops — they plan for it, monitor it, and make
decisions based on the actual number, not the feeling.
That's what you're doing now. You know your number. You have a plan. And that
plan gives you something invaluable — the confidence to say "no" to the wrong
opportunity because you know you have the time to wait for the right one.
In the next lesson, we're going to tackle something equally important but much
less tangible — your mental game. Because financial clarity handles the
practical side of patience, but emotional resilience handles the psychological
side. Go do your math. Your future self will thank you.