I am using LTSpice for that, which allows me to look at the behaviour of a circuit in time and fourier space without risks, but as a disadvantage is like all simulations bounded by the implementation and may not account for every interference experienced in a real circuit.
I am using a breadboard with extra connectors for ground and operational voltage, but you can work with simpler ones quite good as well.
I use this very rarely, since PCBs are too fixed and constraint in my experience, and most of the time, my circuits are of experimental nature, and I like to preserve space for enhancements