Same $10,000 Savings, Completely Different Safety Margin

Two people can each have exactly $10,000 in savings and be in genuinely different financial positions — not because of the balance, but because of what it has to cover.

Person A has $3,000/month in essential expenses: 3.3 months of runway. Person B has $1,500/month in essential expenses: 6.7 months. Same $10,000 balance, more than double the safety margin.

Why "how much should I have saved" is the wrong question

Generic savings targets ("have $X saved by age Y") ignore the one variable that actually determines how safe a given balance is: your own monthly burn rate. A high earner with a high cost of living can be less protected by a large balance than a modest earner with lean fixed costs and a smaller one.

The number that actually matters

Runway in months — savings divided by essential monthly expenses — is a like-for-like comparison that works regardless of income level or where you live. It's the number that answers the real question: if income stopped today, how long would I actually be okay?

Find your own number

Enter your savings balance and monthly expenses into the Savings Runway Calculator to see your exact runway in months, plus the date your balance would hit zero if nothing changed — a much more useful comparison point than a generic savings target.