The companion to The Freedom Threshold Method
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This is a free calculator that answers one question: how close are you to leaving the UK and living on what your business brings in? You don't need to have read the guide to use it.
It takes about 15 minutes. You'll need a rough idea of your household's monthly spending, what your business brings in each month, and what you've set aside in savings. Rough figures are fine. Nothing you enter is saved anywhere except your own browser, so you can close this and come back to it.
Before you rely on any of it
The Schengen, visa, tax and National Insurance information below reflects research current as of 28 September 2026, checked against government and official sources at the time of writing. Rules like this move, sometimes within months. Treat every figure here as a solid starting point for your own homework, not the final word, and check your own current position before you act on it.
This is a planning tool, not tax, visa or financial advice.
01 — Chapter 2
Work out three monthly figures for your household. Each is a different version of the life you want to fund, and each builds on the one before.
Enter monthly amounts for the whole household, you and your partner if you have one. Rough is fine, and you can refine it later.
Here's an illustrative household. It needs a month to cover the essentials, so that's its Survival Number. Adding of comfort extras makes its Comfort Number . Adding a buffer makes its Freedom Number .
The "Try it with example figures" button at the top of the page fills in this household, so you can see a finished result.
Your numbers are also shown in the other currency, worked out from this rate. 1.15 is only a rough planning figure, so set it to the rate you actually expect to get. Switching currency changes how your figures are read. It doesn't convert what you've typed.
Essential monthly costs (your floor)
Include your tax set-aside and business tools here. Your income has to cover them, so they belong in the floor.
Comfort extras (living well, not just surviving)
Freedom buffer
02
One good month doesn't prove your business can support this. Use your real, repeatable average.
Enter your household's average monthly income from work: what comes in before tax and before business costs, because both are already counted in your Survival Number. Use the last six to twelve months rather than your best month.
03 — Chapter 2
Separate from everyday spending. Not holiday money. The fund that lets you leave, not just stay.
This is money you've put aside specifically to support the move and give you time to establish yourself. Leave out anything already committed to a property purchase, relocation costs or other immediate expenses. Your runway is how many months the fund would cover your Survival Number. The example household has against a month, which is 6 months.
Enter your Survival Number and Threshold Fund balance above to see your runway.
04 — Chapter 3
Where you're actually thinking of going changes the real answer. Pick the closest match.
Your destination changes the practical and financial requirements of the move. Choose one to see planning points for UK residents. This is a planning prompt, not a visa assessment or personalised tax advice.
05 — Your Next Move
Give yourself one point for every honest yes. This isn't a pass or fail test, it's how you find the weak spots.
This section looks beyond the money. It asks whether you've thought through the practical, financial and admin steps of leaving the UK and setting up elsewhere. A few questions have a short explanation underneath.
06
This is a score out of 100, which makes it a different kind of number from your Survival, Comfort and Freedom Numbers, which are monthly amounts. It's a snapshot of how prepared you are today. It isn't a prediction, a pass mark or permission to leave.
How this is worked out
Your Threshold Number is the average of three plain measures, not a mystery formula: how much of the 24-point checklist you can honestly tick, how your income sits against your Survival, Comfort and Freedom Numbers, and how many months your Threshold Fund would actually cover. Any section you haven't filled in yet is left out of the average rather than counted against you, so the number only reflects what you've actually entered.
Each measure is turned into a score out of 100 before the three are averaged.
The average then falls into a band: 90 and above is past your threshold, 70 to 89 is at your threshold, 40 to 69 is getting there, and under 40 is early days.