Here's a question worth knowing the honest answer to: if your income stopped today — no salary, no business revenue — how many months could you cover your essential expenses before you'd be in real trouble? That number is your financial runway, and it's one of the clearest single measures of how calm your money situation actually is.
To work it out, take your current liquid savings and divide by your essential monthly expenses. If you have ₹2.4 lakh set aside and your essentials run ₹40,000 a month, your runway is six months. If you have ₹40,000 saved against the same ₹40,000 in expenses, your runway is one month — useful to know honestly, rather than guess at.
Why this number matters more than your total savings figure: ₹5 lakh sounds like a lot until you realise your monthly essentials are ₹1 lakh, giving you just five months of runway. The raw amount doesn't tell the real story; the months of coverage does. It's the difference between "I have savings" and "I know exactly how long they'd protect me."
Calculate your runway today, and revisit it every few months as your savings and expenses both shift. If the number feels uncomfortably short, that's not a verdict on you — it's simply a clear, specific target to work toward, and a far more useful one than a vague feeling that you "should probably save more."