Can I afford to change careers?
Whether the move is right is a life question no calculator should pretend to answer. Whether you can afford it is a maths question — and it has four inputs.
The only four numbers that matter financially
- Your buffer — savings you could genuinely spend during the transition (not your ISA-you'd-never-touch).
- Your essential monthly costs — from bank statements, not memory. Most people's true minimum month is 10–20% higher than their guess.
- The income ramp — how many months until the new path pays what you expect. A salaried job ramps in one month; freelancing and founding typically take six or more.
- Income volatility — salaried income barely moves; freelance income routinely swings 20–40% month to month, which drains buffers faster than the average suggests.
The question a simulation can answer honestly: in what fraction of plausible futures does your buffer stay above zero until the new income carries you?
A real worked example
Someone leaving a £2,600/month job to freelance, with £12,000 saved, £2,400/month essential costs, expecting £2,600/month after a 6-month ramp, at 30% monthly volatility:
buffer £12,000 · essentials £2,400/mo · target income £2,600/mo · ramp 6mo · volatility 30% · horizon 12m
On these stated inputs the engine says 90–100% — financially resilient. But the stress scenario (income −30%, ramp 3 months slower) collapses to 7% survival. That gap is the real finding: the plan works if the income estimate is honest, and fails badly if it's hope. The single most valuable thing this person can do before resigning is turn that income assumption into evidence — a written offer, or two or three signed clients.
What people get wrong
- Counting the average, not the ramp. Most failed transitions die in months 2–5, while income is still ramping — not at the average income level.
- Optimistic essential costs. If you've never had a bank-statement month at your claimed minimum, it isn't your minimum.
- Fast ramp + volatile income. Income that arrives immediately at full rate *and* swings 30% a month is a contradiction. Pick one honestly.
- Forgetting the return option. The ability to go back to employment mid-way makes your true downside less bad than any simulation shows — in your favour, and worth stating.
The honest context
Career moves are normal, not reckless: roughly 2.9 million UK workers changed jobs in 2025 (Indeed Hiring Lab, citing ONS).
What we won't tell you: there is no defensible statistic for the probability a career change "succeeds" — definitions vary too much to pool, and anyone quoting one at you is making it up. LEXUN's career model therefore forecasts only the resolvable question — does your buffer survive the transition? — and says so plainly rather than inventing a success rate.
Work out yours
Runs entirely in your browser; nothing leaves your device. You'll get a survival band, the break-even income where the odds flip, what waiting-and-saving another few months does, and a frozen criterion to come back and score against reality.
Run the career-change analysis →