How Much Money Do You Need To Quit Your Job – And Why?
Friday, May 28th, 2010
I got into an interesting conversation with Jamie last night about the issue of financial cushions and day jobs. It seems like everybody has a number in their head of how much money they need to quit their job. I would say the median number I hear is around $30,000. (It should be noted here that I started with $400, and I had to borrow it.)
What I find is interesting about this is that often, they have absolutely no idea how they came up with the figure.
There’s a kind of logic, I guess, if by “logic” we mean “linear but not particularly logical.” It’s like, “Well, I make $40,000 now. I probably don’t need all of that because I’m pretty sure some of that is work related costs. And I could cut down some. Plus there’s probably get some tax write offs by having a home office. So I’d need maybe $30,000 a year. I guess I’d need about half a year’s salary to be comfortable getting started, so that’s $15,000. And I’ll have business start up costs, so let’s double that and call it thirty grand.”






