# How much money do you need to quit your job?

> How much money you need to quit your job: your personal runway in months without income from the product, why you keep a reserve, and how many customers stop the countdown.

- Course: [From Idea to Profitable Product: Building Without Investors](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product.md)
- Module: Before you start
- Lesson 3/30, ~26 min
- Source: https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/personal-runway

## How much money does Nina need to quit?

**Alex Tutor:** Back to GarageDesk, where you still advise Nina and Oscar with me. Nina's resignation letter is written. Before she sends it, she must answer the question every founder asks: how much money do I need to quit my job?

**Alex Tutor:** The answer is her personal **runway**: how many months she can keep going before the money runs out. With no income yet, it's savings divided by what you spend a month, your **burn rate**.

![A glass jar of coins drips coins out of a small tap at the bottom at a steady pace; a woman watches, holding a wall calendar.](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/inline/personal-runway-illustration-2.webp)

*Runway: how many months the savings last at this spending.*

**Nina:** I have 360,000 UAH saved. Rent in Vinnytsia is 12,000 a month, food and bills 11,000, transport, phone and everything else 7,000.

**Sofia:** So 30,000 a month. Can she trust those numbers?

**Alex Tutor:** Only if they come from her last three bank statements, not from the budget she wishes she had. “Everything else” is almost always underestimated.

> **Exercise:** Before any side income or reserve: Nina has 360,000 UAH and spends 12,000 + 11,000 + 7,000 UAH a month. Her runway?

**Alex Tutor:** Nina has two ways to get her monthly spending. Which one would you trust?

> **Exercise:** Which spending figure should Nina's runway use?

## Side income, net burn and a cash reserve

**Nina:** The distributor wants me to keep maintaining their ordering system: about five hours a week for 10,000 UAH a month.

**Alex Tutor:** Take it: income that doesn't eat your week is gold. Your net burn becomes spending minus income: 30,000 − 10,000 = 20,000 UAH a month.

**Alex Tutor:** Now the reserve. Put aside three months of full spending and leave it out of the runway: it's for illness, a broken laptop or the contract ending.

![Next to a dripping jar of savings stands a small separate box with a padlock, pushed slightly aside.](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/inline/personal-runway-illustration-3.webp)

**Sofia:** Three months of 30,000, or of 20,000?

**Alex Tutor:** Of the full 30,000: the reserve is for the day the side income stops.

$$
R = \dfrac{S - Z}{E - I}
$$

*Runway R in months: savings S minus reserve Z, divided by spending E minus income I.*

> **Exercise:** Add the reserve (three months of full spending) and the 10,000 UAH a month contract. Savings 360,000 UAH, spending 30,000 a month. What is Nina's runway in months?

## Runway is the limit, not the plan

**Sofia:** 13.5 months. Sounds like plenty.

**Alex Tutor:** It always does at the start. Building, first sales, getting paid: everything takes longer than planned. Runway is the limit, not the schedule.

**Alex Tutor:** So put a checkpoint around halfway, say month 7. If paying shops aren't growing by then, Nina takes more freelance work or goes back to a job while money is left.

![Nina keeps 90,000 UAH in reserve; the other 270,000 lasts 13.5 months with the side income, 9 without it, and she checks progress at month 7, in June.](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/diagrams/m1-l3-runway-timeline.png)

*Runway is the limit; the checkpoint comes halfway.*

**Nina:** And if the distributor ends my contract early?

**Alex Tutor:** Then recount with the same formula and no income. Recount whenever any of the numbers changes.

> **Exercise:** Nina has 360,000 UAH saved and spends 30,000 UAH a month. She keeps a 90,000 UAH reserve, and with a 10,000 UAH a month side contract her runway is 13.5 months. Now the contract ends the day she quits; the reserve stays untouched. **True or false:** her runway drops from 13.5 to 9 months.

**Alex Tutor:** So when should Nina stop and look at the numbers?

> **Exercise:** Nina's runway is 13.5 months. When should she decide whether GarageDesk is on track or she needs to change course?

## The finish line

**Sofia:** Where's the finish line, then?

**Alex Tutor:** When the business covers the founders' basic living costs. That's **ramen profitability**: nobody gets rich, but the countdown stops.

![A founder at a small kitchen table eats a simple bowl of noodles with a satisfied smile; her laptop shows a small upward arrow.](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/inline/personal-runway-illustration-4.webp)

*Nobody gets rich yet, but the savings stop draining.*

**Oscar:** For Nina alone at 600 UAH per shop: 30,000 / 600 = 50 shops. For both of us: her 30,000, my 18,000 and 2,000 for hosting and tools, so 50,000 a month.

**Alex Tutor:** Now you have both ends: how long the savings last and how many shops stop the countdown.

> **Exercise:** Nina needs 30,000 UAH a month, Oscar 18,000, tools 2,000. At 600 UAH per shop, how many paying shops make both founders ramen profitable?

## Stretching the runway

**Sofia:** How can Nina make the money last longer?

**Alex Tutor:** Three levers: spend less, earn a little on the side, and charge customers as early as possible. Only the last one also proves the business works.

**Nina:** So I start selling in month one, not when the product feels “finished”.

**Alex Tutor:** Exactly. Now put the whole method in order.

> **Exercise:** Put the steps of a founder's runway plan in order.

**Alex Tutor:** Let's put the first lever into numbers. Nina has found a cheaper flat.

> **Exercise:** Nina's bank statements now show spending of **25,000 UAH** a month instead of 30,000. She still has 360,000 UAH saved and the 10,000 UAH a month contract, and her reserve is three months of the new full spending. What is her runway in months?

## The checkpoint

**Sofia:** When exactly is Nina's checkpoint?

**Alex Tutor:** She quits at the end of November, so month 7 is June.

**Nina:** June. But I don't want to decide in June what “good enough” means. I'd just argue with myself.

**Alex Tutor:** So write the rule now: one number, a threshold and what you do on each side of it.

> **Exercise:** Nina quits her job at the end of November with a runway of 13.5 months, so month 7 is June. GarageDesk charges 600 UAH per shop per month, and 50 paying shops would cover her 30,000 UAH a month. Write her month-7 checkpoint rule in 3–5 sentences: which number she checks in June, what counts as “on track” and what she does if she isn't.

> **Key ideas**
>
> - **Runway** = (savings − reserve) / (monthly spending − monthly income), with spending from real bank statements.
> - The **reserve** is three months of full spending, kept outside the runway.
> - Nina: 270,000 / 20,000 = **13.5 months**; without the side income, 270,000 / 30,000 = 9.
> - Runway is the limit, not the plan: decide at a checkpoint while money is left.
> - **Ramen profitability** stops the countdown: 50 shops for Nina, 84 for both founders.

**Alex Tutor:** Next time: where GarageDesk is on the road from idea to a business that runs without heroics.

- Previous lesson: [Side project or full time?](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/side-project-or-full-time.md)
- Next lesson: [Money milestones for a startup](https://productovi.com/courses/bootstrapped-product/money-milestones.md)

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