Last checked 3 September 2026
Burn rate is the amount of money spent over a month, and net burn rate is spending minus income over the same month — the rate at which reserves are actually being consumed.
Gross burn is total spending. Net burn subtracts income, and is the one that determines runway: someone spending $5,000 a month while earning $4,500 has a net burn of $500, not $5,000.
The number is only useful as a trailing average. Any single month contains something irregular — an annual insurance premium, a holiday, a tax payment — so a three- or twelve-month trailing figure is what tracks reality. selftickr's ledger computes burn from recorded transactions rather than asking for an estimate, because self-reported spending is reliably too low.
Burn rate is the lever with the largest leverage in a financial plan, since it appears on both sides: lowering it raises the savings rate and lowers the FIRE number at the same time.
monthly spending − monthly income
Positive means reserves are shrinking; negative means they are growing.
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