YNAB

YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a budgeting app with an actual method behind it: give every dollar a job. Instead of watching where money went last month, you assign what you have right now to specific purposes. After a layoff, that method does something urgent: it turns a severance check and a savings balance into a runway you can see.

What it does

• Zero-based budgeting: every dollar you hold gets assigned a purpose
• Bank syncing so transactions land in your budget automatically
• Goals and targets for recurring costs, so future months are funded in advance
• Reports that show your real monthly spend, the number your runway math depends on

The layoff move is simple: total what you have, divide by your true monthly spend, and you get months of runway. Vague dread becomes a number, and a number is something you can plan a search around.

Pricing

Paid, as a subscription, with a free trial that's long enough to build the full budget and see your runway before you spend anything. It's a strange moment to add a subscription, but clarity about your money tends to pay for itself in a no-income stretch.

Who it's for

• Anyone recently laid off who can't say how many months they have
• People holding severance and unsure how carefully to spend it
• Households that need a shared, honest picture of the money

How it fits an Offboard search

Runway is the search's clock: it sets how selective you can afford to be. Offboard has runway planning built in, connected to your applications and timeline; YNAB goes deeper on the day-to-day money mechanics, and the two coexist fine. Get market context from Layoffs.fyi, and cut your biggest expense risk by comparing coverage on HealthCare.gov.