What is the Freedom Ladder?
The Freedom Ladder shows where your money should sit: four rungs, from a shock fund to what lies beyond independence, each with its own target and its own job.
The Freedom Ladder is the page in your plan that answers where your money should sit. The rest of the product answers how much you need; the ladder splits what you already hold across four rungs, each with its own job, its own target and its own arithmetic shown. You find it in the rail as Freedom Ladder, and its heading reads Where your money should sit.
The four rungs
| Rung | Protects against | Held as |
|---|---|---|
| Survival | A shock that will not wait | Cash you can reach the same day |
| Sustenance | Income stopping | A laddered runway, no growth assets |
| Sufficiency | The number itself | One equity-to-debt decision |
| Surplus | What comes after | Whatever you choose it to be |
Each rung has its own purpose, its own target formula and its own instrument mix. They are not four versions of one allocation model.
The four rungs as a plain table: what each one protects against, and what it is held as. Each rung has its own purpose and its own target, rather than being four versions of one allocation.
Illustrative figures — not anybody’s real plan.
The four rungs
- Survival — money you can reach today, for a shock that will not wait. Its target is a number of months of essential spending.
- Sustenance — runway if income stops, so you never sell your investments at a loss to eat. Its target is years of full household spending.
- Sufficiency — the corpus itself. When this rung is full, the whole ladder has reached your FI number.
- Surplus — what sits beyond independence, and what you choose to do with it. It has no target, by design.
The rungs are cumulative rather than four separate pots: everything you hold counts toward the level it reaches and toward every rung above it. Why the rungs are cumulative explains what that means for your figures.
What is on the page
- A one-line reading of where you are on the ladder, such as Between Sustenance and Sufficiency — where most households sit for years.
- Niv’s read, when she has something to say about this exact set of figures.
- The ladder drawn as one bar, with every rung read out underneath: what it holds, what it needs, a word for how full it is and what is still to go.
- Four rung cards. The three with a target each have a control — months for Survival, years for Sustenance, the mix for Sufficiency; Surplus has none.
- Where this goes — a projection of when each rung is reached.
- What would close the gap and What stands out, when there is something to say.
Where the figures come from
There is nothing extra to type. The ladder reads your spending, what you hold, your income, your loans, your return assumption and the FI number from the plan you already have. The home you live in is left out, as it is everywhere else (why).
The page needs a generated plan. Before that it shows the four rungs empty, with Generate my plan if you have started or Create my plan if you have not.
See this in your own plan.
Open Freedom LadderLast reviewed 1 October 2026.