FIRE calculator

The core figure is 25× your annual spending. From the 4% rule (based on the Trinity Study, which found that withdrawing 4% of assets per year lasts 30+ years), target = annual spending ÷ 0.04 = annual spending × 25. $2,500/month ($30,000/year) needs $750K; $5,000/month ($60,000/year) needs $1.5M. A conservative 3.5% rate raises this to 28.6×; an aggressive 5% drops it to 20×.

It comes from Bengen's 1994 research and the 1998 Trinity University study: withdraw 4% of the portfolio in year one, adjust that dollar amount for inflation each year after, and a stock-heavy allocation survived essentially every historical 30-year window. Two caveats matter if you plan to retire early. First, the studies assumed a 30-year retirement — leaving work at 45 means funding 45 or more years, which pushes the sustainable rate down. Second, the outcome is driven by sequence-of-returns risk: a deep drawdown in your first few years does far more damage than the same drawdown at year 20, because you're selling shares to eat while prices are low. Health coverage compounds the issue, since before Medicare at 65 you're buying ACA marketplace insurance whose premium subsidies are income-tested, tying your withdrawal plan to your insurance cost. That's why many US early retirees model 3.25-3.5% and hold one to two years of cash to avoid selling into a crash.

Coast FIRE is the point where you've saved enough that compounding alone, with zero additional saving, will carry you to your target by retirement age. Save a sufficient seed by 35, and even saving $0 afterward you'll hit the target at 65. While Standard FIRE means 'enough to quit today,' Coast FIRE means 'enough to ease off the savings accelerator' — reached far sooner. This calculator supports both modes.

They sort FIRE by lifestyle, not by a different formula — every version uses the same 25× math. Lean FIRE is a deliberately frugal retirement on under roughly $40,000 a year, a target under about $1M. Fat FIRE keeps a full lifestyle at $150,000+ a year, a $3.75M+ target. Regular FIRE sits between them, and Barista FIRE means covering part of the gap — often health insurance — with part-time work instead of portfolio withdrawals. The preset buttons under the chart load $2,000, $4,000, and $10,000 of monthly spending, which at a 4% withdrawal rate means targets of $600,000, $1.2M, and $3M. Clicking through them shows something useful: your lifestyle choice moves the required nest egg far more than any realistic change to your return assumption.

A lower rate means you draw a smaller share each year, so the principal lasts longer. The 4% figure assumes a 30-year retirement, but someone retiring in their 40s or 50s faces a 40-60 year horizon, which raises depletion risk. That's why early retirees are often advised to use 3.25-3.5%, or about 29-31× annual spending. Adjusting the withdrawal-rate input here shows how the target grows non-linearly as the rate falls: 5% needs 20× your spending, 4% needs 25×, and 3.5% needs 28.6× — the last half-point costs you more than the first.

Much faster, because the seed compounds from day one. Take a $1.5M target ($5,000 a month of spending), $4,000 saved monthly, a 7% return and a 15% tax on gains: from zero this calculator reaches the target in about 25.3 years, but starting with $500,000 already invested it gets there in about 13.4 years — roughly 12 years earlier for a head start worth one third of the goal. The reason is that an existing balance earns from month one and its growth compounds on itself, while new savings arrive one month at a time. It's also why the last stretch feels effortless: on this page's default settings, after-tax investment gains overtake the monthly contribution around year 10, and from then on the portfolio is doing most of the work.

Both, but at different stages. In the first decade contributions dominate: on this calculator's default settings ($30,000 to start, $1,500 a month, 7% return, 15% tax on gains), 10 years in you've contributed $180,000 and earned about $89,000 of after-tax growth, so savings are two thirds of the increase. Run the same plan 30 years and it inverts — $540,000 contributed against roughly $1.10M of growth. Return matters most when the balance is largest, which is late. That's also why a single percentage point isn't a rounding error over long horizons: on a $50,000 start plus $2,500 a month, earning 7% instead of 6% is about $134,000 more after 20 years and about $434,000 more after 30. The practical split is to control the savings rate, which is yours to decide, and take the market return with low-cost broad index funds (S&P 500 or total-market) rather than trying to beat it.

Your input tax rate is applied to each month's investment gain (interest or appreciation) before compounding, so treat it as a tax-drag assumption rather than a tax return. In a taxable brokerage account, long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at 0%, 15%, or 20% by taxable income, while interest and short-term gains are taxed at ordinary rates (10%-37%), plus a 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax above $200,000 of MAGI single / $250,000 married filing jointly. Inside a 401(k), Traditional or Roth IRA, or HSA, growth isn't taxed year to year, so 0% is the honest input for that slice. And the 0% bracket is wider than most people assume: for 2026 a married couple filing jointly with no other income can hold up to $98,900 of taxable long-term gains at 0%, with the $32,200 standard deduction on top. Figures are 2026 federal rules and exclude state tax. This is for information only, not tax advice.

The savings rate is the dominant lever, and it's arithmetic rather than motivation: starting from zero at roughly a 5% real return, saving 25% of your income takes about 31 years, 50% takes about 16 years, and 65% takes about 10 years — because every dollar you don't spend both adds to savings and lowers the target itself. The second lever is tax location. For 2026 you can shelter $24,500 in a 401(k) ($32,500 at 50 or older), $7,500 in an IRA, and $4,400 self-only or $8,750 family in an HSA, all of which cuts the tax drag this calculator applies to each month's gain. The third is bridging the age gap: retirement-account money is generally locked until 59 1/2, so early retirees build a taxable brokerage bridge, a Roth conversion ladder, or use the rule of 55 or 72(t) payments. Raising income only helps if the raise goes into savings instead of into lifestyle.

Yes. The 4% rule is conservative by design — historically, in many scenarios assets were larger after 30 years than at the start. When your real return (stocks' long-run real ~7%) exceeds the 4% withdrawal rate, the portfolio grows net even while you withdraw. The caveat is 'sequence of returns risk': a steep market drop in the first few years can shrink assets fast, so withdrawing conservatively early on is safer.