Your 30-day cash plan

The first move after a job loss is not budgeting, cutting, or job-hunting. It is getting one honest number: how long your money lasts at your current pace. Uncertainty is the expensive part, because a vague fear has no size and no plan, while a runway measured in weeks has both. A 30-day cash plan replaces the fog with arithmetic. You are going to write down every dollar you can actually reach, every dollar arriving in the next 30 days, and every dollar leaving. The difference is your real position, and a real position, even a tight one, is something you can act on. Most people's 3am math double-counts the outflows and forgets half the inflows, so the number on paper almost always beats the one in your head.

Start with cash you can access without penalty or a phone call: checking, savings, cash on hand, and money sitting in a settled brokerage account. Do not count retirement accounts, home equity, or anything you would have to borrow against. That is a later-and-only-if decision, not runway. Then list money genuinely arriving in the next 30 days with dates: your final paycheck, any payout for unused PTO (laws vary by state, check your final pay stub or your state labor site), severance if offered, a partner's income, and any side income already in motion. Unemployment insurance belongs here too, and it is the one people leave blank; the benefits lesson turns it into a real weekly figure, so hold a line for it now. Put a real date next to each, because timing is what actually causes a missed payment, not the monthly total.

Now list everything leaving in the next 30 days, again with dates: rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, minimum debt payments, insurance, phone and internet, transportation, childcare. Use the actual amounts from last month's statements, not estimates, because estimates run optimistic. Add starting cash plus inflows, subtract outflows, and you have your projected cash at day 30. Divide your accessible cash by your monthly essential spend and you have your runway in months. That runway number is the single most important input to every other decision in this course. It tells you whether you are making four-week decisions or six-month decisions, and those are very different postures.

One more output: your zero date, the calendar day your projected balance would hit zero if nothing changed. You are not going to let it get there, that is what the rest of this course prevents. But naming the date does two things. It converts a vague dread into a specific, distant point you have time to act well before, and it sets your urgency honestly. Most people find their zero date is further out than they feared once severance, a final check, and a leaner budget are all on the page.

A runway number means nothing until you benchmark it, so here is the reference point. As of June 2026 the median U.S. unemployment spell is about 11 weeks, roughly 2.5 months, so about half of people find work in under that; the average is higher, about 25.5 weeks or near 6 months, because a minority of searches run long and pull the mean up (Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2026; the median measures in-progress spells, not completed searches). Read your own runway against that band. Under about 2.5 months puts you below the typical search length, so you run in cash-priority mode: file for benefits immediately, cut hard, and start bridge income this week. Roughly 2.5 to 6 months is a solid position, enough to run a real search without panic. Six months or more means your job is to protect search time, not to over-index on bridge work at the expense of landing the right role. Budget toward the longer number even while you aim to beat the median, because a slow stretch you planned for is an inconvenience and one you did not is a crisis.

• Open the 30-day cash plan template or a blank spreadsheet.
• List every account you can access without penalty and its balance, then total it.
• List each inflow arriving in the next 30 days with its expected date.
• List each outflow due in the next 30 days with its date and last month's actual amount.
• Calculate your day-30 cash, your runway in months, and your zero date.
• Rate your runway against the BLS band: under ~2.5 months is cash-priority, ~2.5 to 6 is solid, 6+ means protect search time.
• Circle your three largest outflows. Those are your triage targets for the next lesson.

Friday afternoon, a project manager is walked out with a banker's box and spends the weekend certain the family is broke. On Monday she does the arithmetic instead. Accessible cash: $6,200 checking plus $3,200 savings, so $9,400. Money in over 30 days: a final paycheck of $3,100 on the 15th and a PTO payout of $1,150 a week later, no severance. Money out, using last month's actual statements: $4,350 including rent on the 1st and a car payment on the 20th. Day-30 cash comes out to $9,300, runway is about 2.2 months at current spending, and the zero date lands in mid-September, not 'any day now.' Then she rates it: at 2.2 months she is just under the roughly 2.5-month median search length, so the plan writes itself, file for benefits Monday, cut this week, treat this as cash-priority rather than comfortable. The situation did not change, but a vague dread became a specific posture, and the three largest outflows are now circled as triage targets.

• Counting retirement accounts, home equity, or open credit card limits as part of your runway. Runway is only cash you can reach today without penalty or borrowing. Retirement money is a later-and-only-if decision; credit is debt, not cash. Keep them off the worksheet.
• Filling in the outflow column from memory, which always runs optimistic and understates the burn. Open last month's bank and card statements and copy the actual amounts. If the memory number and the statement number disagree, the statement is right.
• Only doing monthly totals and skipping the dates, then getting surprised by a mid-month shortfall when rent hits before the final paycheck arrives. Put a real date next to every inflow and outflow. Timing causes missed payments, not the monthly total.
• Computing the runway number and then either spiraling or relaxing, because a bare figure has no reference point. Rate it against the roughly 11-week median and 25.5-week mean search length (BLS, June 2026). Under about 2.5 months is cash-priority; 2.5 to 6 is solid; 6-plus means protect your search time.