What if I lost my job for a while?
If earned income stopped, the plan does not stop with it. Rent or the mortgage, loan payments, food and bills carry on at much the same level, and the question is how many months the accessible money covers them — and what the household looks like when work resumes.
What sets the runway
- The spending that continues regardless, separated from the part you could reduce quickly.
- Fixed commitments — rent or mortgage, loan payments, insurance — and their exact monthly total.
- The money you could reach within days, as opposed to wealth tied up elsewhere.
- Any severance or support you expect, entered as the amount and the months you choose.
- The length of the gap you want to test, and the income level when work resumes.
Test the length of the gap
Take the plan as it stands and, in a copy, stop the income from a chosen month. Then run the same copy again with a longer gap: three months, six, twelve. Reading three lengths against one unchanged baseline shows where the plan stops being comfortable and starts being tight, which is the number worth knowing.
Change one thing at a time. Cutting spending and shortening the gap in the same variant tells you nothing about either, because you cannot see which of them did the work. If you want to know what reduced spending buys, hold the gap fixed and lower the spending on its own.
Questions worth testing
- How many months does the accessible money cover at the current spending level?
- Which commitments cannot be paused, and what do they total each month?
- How much does the runway change if spending drops by a tenth?
- Does returning on a lower income still leave the longer plan intact?
How to read the result
Worthifi works with the gap length, the spending and the support amount you enter. It does not calculate severance or unemployment benefit, does not know what you would be entitled to or for how long, and makes no claim about how long finding work takes. Check entitlements with the labour office or an adviser. This is a planning illustration, not financial or legal advice.
How it works in the app
A bounded income change drops your income to zero for the months you choose, then reverts to your regular income afterwards. See how far your runway stretches, and whether savings alone bridge the gap.
- Tap “Change your income”.
- Choose “For a period”, set the amount to 0, and pick the start and end month.
- Check your runway — how long your money lasts — through the gap.
Model this yourself