On this sheet · 4 parts
1Why costs, not salary
Almost everyone plans against their salary. It is the number they know, so it becomes the target: replace the salary, then leave.
But the salary is what you earn, not what you need. The gap between the two is often most of the problem, and it is a gap you can measure in an afternoon.
2The sheet
Write down what you would still be paying next month if you stopped everything optional today.
Only you see this. Nothing is saved or sent.
3What to leave off
Anything you would stop within a month of needing to. Subscriptions, meals out, the gym you might go back to. Not because you would have to give them up, but because including them tells you what a comfortable month costs rather than what a necessary one costs, and those are different questions.
Leave your own pay off it entirely. This sheet produces one number: what leaving has to cover.
4What the number is for
It is the floor. It is what any new income has to clear before anything else is true.
Two things tend to happen when people finish this sheet. The number is smaller than the salary they had been aiming at, sometimes by half. And the first customer starts to matter more than the tenth, because the first one is a real fraction of a real number rather than a step towards an abstraction.
BYE members get a tool that does this arithmetic properly, with tax, runway and three sets of assumptions. The sheet above is the part that changes how people think, and it is free.
General information to help you think things through. Not regulated financial, legal or tax advice.