Your monthly cost floor.

Fixed costs are expenses that don't scale with revenue. Rent stays the same whether you sell 100 or 10,000 units. This calculator totals the main fixed cost lines: rent, utilities, insurance, fixed salaries (managers, admin), subscriptions, and other recurring overhead. The result shows your monthly 'floor cost' - what you owe before earning anything.

4k rent + 800 utilities + 2,400 insurance annual (200/mo) + 8k fixed salaries + 1,200 subscriptions + 600 other = 14,800 monthly fixed, 177,600 annual. This is the break-even before any variable costs - revenue must exceed 14,800/month before gross margin from sales starts becoming actual profit.

Fixed costs determine break-even volume. A business with 15k fixed costs and 40% gross margin needs 37,500 revenue/month to break even (15k ÷ 0.4). Lower fixed costs or higher margins reduce break-even. Many startups survive tough months not by selling more but by cutting fixed costs - sublet office, cancel subscriptions, renegotiate contracts.

A worked example

Try the defaults: rent monthly of 4,000, utilities monthly of 800, insurance annual of 2,400, fixed salaries monthly of 8,000. The tool returns 14,800.00. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Rent Monthly, Utilities Monthly, Insurance Annual, Fixed Salaries Monthly, and Software Subscriptions Monthly. Frequency and unit price pull the total in different directions. The biggest surprise for most people is how small recurring amounts compound into large annual figures — that's where this calculation earns its keep.

The formula behind this

Sum all monthly fixed costs. Annual = monthly × 12. Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

Using this as a check-in

Re-run this every three months. A single reading tells you where you stand; four readings tell you whether things are improving. The trend matters more than any individual snapshot.

What this doesn't capture

The score is a composite of the inputs you provide. Life context — job security, family obligations, health, housing — doesn't appear in the math but shapes the real picture. Use the number as a prompt, not a verdict.