Free tool · for anyone weighing up leaving a steady job for a business of their own
Should I Quit My Day Job? Runway Calculator
Before you can decide whether to work for yourself, you have to know how long you could afford to try. This free calculator answers exactly that, and nothing more: put in what the household spends each month, what the day job takes home, what the side business is already making and how fast it is growing. It returns three things — the month the business would cover your expenses, how long the savings alone would last if you left today, and a conservative safe-quit month with an emergency fund still standing. It runs in your browser on Ardent Seller, our software for makers and small sellers; it asks for no email, and the figures you type never leave your browser.
Use it free — no signup
Runs free on Ardent Seller, our software for makers. No email, no account — it opens straight into the tool.
What it does
- Three answers, not one: the month the business covers your expenses on its own growth, the runway your savings alone would buy if you left today, and a conservative safe-quit month that still leaves an emergency fund intact.
- Takes self-employment tax and your effective income tax rate as inputs, so the figure it compares against your expenses is take-home, not revenue.
- Sensitivity scenarios — what a slower growth rate, tighter expenses or a higher price would each do to the safe-quit month.
- Growth-rate presets so you can run an optimistic and a pessimistic case in about ten seconds each.
- Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. The figures you type stay in the browser tab — they are never sent to us and never saved. Close the tab and they are gone.
Related reading
Own it, don't rent it
Knowing when you could leave is not the same as knowing whether to
This calculator answers when you could afford to leave. It does not answer whether you should, because that question is not about cash — it is about whether the path is actually better once the money is measured the same way on both sides. The Career-Pivot Decision Helper is that comparison, as a 10-tab Excel and Google Sheets workbook with four PDF guides, 38 pages in all. It scores up to six paths side by side (staying put, a different job, freelancing, a business, a hybrid that keeps the paycheck, and one spare column) across thirteen criteria you weight yourself. Three of the thirteen refuse to be guessed — total compensation, effective hourly rate, and downside risk — and compute from your own numbers instead: the employment tax done properly for wages, self-employment income or a hybrid of the two; the employer health premium and retirement match you stop receiving; the qualified business income deduction of up to 20% you start; and every unpaid hour of selling, admin and commuting in the denominator. Out come one total effective annual compensation and one effective hourly rate per path. Alongside them sit a twelve-arrangement reference with the 2026 tax figures and a worst-case runway model run separately for every path — not just for leaving today. Downloaded once, yours to keep.
A one-time purchase you keep and rerun whenever the numbers change — the owned scorecard between a blank spreadsheet and a career coach on a monthly retainer.
A planning and decision-making tool, not tax, financial, legal, employment or career advice. Both the free calculator and the paid workbook use simplified tax estimates that you set yourself, and neither is a substitute for a CPA or a financial planner. Free to use; please don’t resell or redistribute.