How long a career break can you afford?

Most people work it out on the back of an envelope: savings divided by monthly spending. That number is too optimistic for three reasons. Your investments keep earning while you draw them down, which helps. Selling investments can trigger tax, which hurts. And a career break rarely ends the day you start applying again; it ends the day the first salary lands, typically one to three months later.

This calculator runs a month-by-month drawdown instead. Each month your liquid assets earn a yield based on their class, your expenses come out, and the loop continues until the balance hits zero. Property is shown but excluded, because you cannot spend a kitchen. The result is a runway in months you can actually plan around.

Financially, no. Whether you call it a sabbatical, a career break or an adult gap year, the maths is the same: how many months of spending can your liquid assets cover, and what is left when you return. Legally, the label can matter a great deal. In France a formal congé sabbatique keeps your job and social security. In Spain an excedencia voluntaria gives you a preferential right to return. In the Netherlands and Germany it depends on your CAO or contract, and resigning outright usually means no unemployment benefit. The country guides cover the rules for eleven countries.

Treat the runway as a ceiling, not a target. A comfortable break uses no more than two thirds of it, leaving a buffer for the job search and the surprises. If the calculator says 14 months, plan for 8 or 9. Then look at the risk score: a low score with a diversified, liquid mix means a market wobble barely moves the number. A high score means one bad year could cut the break short, and the fix is usually to hold more cash before you go, not to shorten the break.

Finally, run the scenarios. A 20% spending cut often adds more months than any investment decision, because it compounds every single month. Seeing that in your own numbers is worth more than any general advice.