How much money do you need to quit your job?

Before a founder quits a job, one number matters more than any business plan: the personal runway, the number of months they can keep going before their money runs out.

With no income at all, it's a single division:

runway = savings ÷ monthly spending

Monthly spending is the founder's burn rate: everything that leaves the account in a typical month, from rent to the phone bill.

For Nina: rent 12,000 + food and bills 11,000 + transport, phone and everything else 7,000 = 30,000 UAH a month. With 360,000 UAH saved: 360,000 ÷ 30,000 = 12 months.

Two habits keep the number honest:

• add up every line before dividing; dividing by one line (just rent) makes the runway look three times longer;
• use months as the unit and keep the answer as a decimal if needed (13.5 months is a real answer).

This is the starting point. The next steps adjust it for side income and a safety reserve.

A runway is only as good as the spending figure under it, and that figure is the one people get wrong most often.

The tempting source is a planned budget: what you intend to spend once you're careful. It's usually too low. Small purchases, subscriptions, gifts, repairs and "everything else" never fit into a plan written in one evening.

The reliable source is what actually left the account. Take the last three bank statements, add up each month and use the average. Three months smooth out one unusual month (a holiday, a big repair) without hiding regular costs.

Then compare the result with the plan. If the statements show 30,000 UAH a month and the plan says 24,000, the plan is a goal to work toward, not a number to bet your savings on. Cutting spending is a real lever, but count it only after it has shown up in a statement.

An overly hopeful spending figure doesn't just shift the answer a little: every month of underestimated spending shortens the real runway.

Two adjustments turn the simple runway into a realistic one.

Side income lowers the burn. If a founder keeps earning something, only the gap has to come from savings: net burn = monthly spending − monthly income. Nina's five-hour-a-week contract pays 10,000 UAH, so her net burn is 30,000 − 10,000 = 20,000 UAH. Income that doesn't eat the week is worth keeping.

A reserve comes out first. Set aside three months of full spending for illness, a broken laptop or a contract that ends, and leave it out of the runway. Full spending, not net burn, because the reserve exists for the day the side income stops: 3 × 30,000 = 90,000 UAH.

Put together:

runway = (savings − reserve) ÷ (spending − income)

For Nina: (360,000 − 90,000) ÷ (30,000 − 10,000) = 270,000 ÷ 20,000 = 13.5 months.

The reserve isn't wasted money. It's what lets the founder hit a bad month without abandoning the plan.

A runway is a calculation, not a fact about the future. It's only true while its inputs stay the same, so recount it with the same formula whenever any number changes: savings, spending, income or the reserve.

The input that changes most easily is side income. Suppose Nina's 10,000 UAH contract ends the day she quits. The reserve of 90,000 UAH stays set aside, so the savings for the runway are still 270,000 UAH, but the net burn jumps back to the full 30,000:

270,000 ÷ 30,000 = 9 months, down from 13.5.

Losing a third of her monthly need in income cut her runway by a third. That's why the reserve is sized on full spending: it was built for exactly this day.

A simple habit helps: keep the formula in a spreadsheet with one cell per input. When a client leaves, rent goes up or a freelance job comes in, change one cell and read the new runway the same day, instead of discovering the change months later in the bank balance.

13.5 months always sounds like plenty at the start. It isn't a plan for using all 13.5 months, though; it's the limit after which the money is gone. Building, first sales and getting paid all take longer than expected, so a plan that only works if everything goes on time will run out of money.

The fix is a checkpoint around halfway, decided in advance. For Nina, who quits at the end of November, month 7 is June. At the checkpoint she looks at one measurable number, such as paying shops, and acts on it:

• on track: carry on and recount the runway with fresh numbers;
• off track: take more freelance work, cut spending or go back to a job, while there are still months of money left.

A checkpoint near the end is useless: with one month of savings left, there's no time to find a job calmly or test anything new. A decision taken halfway is a choice; one taken at the end is an emergency.

Runway tells you how long the money lasts. The other end of the plan is the finish line: ramen profitability, the point where the business covers the founders' basic living costs. Nobody gets rich, but the countdown stops.

To turn it into a customer count:

1. Add up everything the business must pay each month: each founder's living costs plus the company's own running costs. For GarageDesk: Nina 30,000 + Oscar 18,000 + hosting and tools 2,000 = 50,000 UAH.
2. Divide by revenue per customer per month: 50,000 ÷ 600 = 83.33.
3. Round up, because you can't have a third of a shop and 83 aren't enough: 83 × 600 = 49,800, which is 200 UAH short; 84 × 600 = 50,400 covers it.

So GarageDesk needs 84 paying shops for both founders, and 30,000 ÷ 600 = 50 for Nina alone.

Two common slips: forgetting the company's own costs (that gives 80) and rounding down to the nearest whole number. Both leave the founders a little short every single month.

The whole method fits in four steps, and their order matters because each one needs the result of the step before:

1. Add up monthly spending from the last three bank statements. Everything else is built on this number.
2. Set aside the reserve: three months of full spending. You can't size it before you know the spending.
3. Divide the remaining savings by the net burn (spending minus side income). This needs both the reserve and the spending.
4. Put a checkpoint in the calendar around halfway through the runway. You can't place "halfway" until you know the runway.

Alongside the plan sit three levers that stretch it:

• spend less, counted only once it shows in a statement;
• earn a little on the side, ideally work that doesn't eat the week;
• charge customers as early as possible.

Only the third lever does two jobs at once: it extends the runway and proves that the business works. That's why Nina starts selling in month one instead of waiting until the product feels "finished".

Cutting spending stretches the runway twice: the net burn falls, and the reserve, sized on full spending, shrinks too and frees savings for the runway.

Recount with the same formula, changing every input the cut touches:

1. New full spending: say Nina moves to a cheaper flat and trims other costs, from 30,000 to 25,000 UAH a month.
2. New reserve: 3 × 25,000 = 75,000 UAH.
3. Savings for the runway: 360,000 − 75,000 = 285,000 UAH.
4. New net burn: 25,000 − 10,000 = 15,000 UAH.
5. Runway: 285,000 ÷ 15,000 = 19 months, up from 13.5.

A 5,000 UAH cut added 5.5 months, because the gap the savings must fill shrank from 20,000 to 15,000.

The typical slip is changing only one input: keeping the old 90,000 reserve gives 270,000 ÷ 15,000 = 18, and forgetting the side income gives 285,000 ÷ 25,000 = 11.4. And count a cut only once it shows up in a bank statement.