Find the savings target for financial independence, how much is left to save, and how sensitive that target is to your withdrawal rate.
A planning target, not a promise you'll hit it on schedule.
Your FIRE number is annual expenses divided by your safe withdrawal rate. At the standard 4% rate, that works out to 25 times your yearly spending. We then project years to reach it by growing your current savings and annual contributions at your expected return until the balance clears that target.
| Withdrawal rate | FIRE number = expenses x |
|---|---|
| 4.5% | 22.2 |
| 4.0% (used by this calculator) | 25.0 |
| 3.5% | 28.6 |
| 3.0% | 33.3 |
The 4% figure comes from the Trinity study (Trinity University, 1998), which tested rolling historical U.S. market returns against roughly 30-year withdrawal periods. Because a FIRE retirement often needs to last far longer than 30 years, many independent researchers and FIRE writers argue for the more conservative 3% to 3.5% range shown above.
Not every version of financial independence means quitting work entirely on a fixed date. Coast FIRE describes having saved enough already that compounding alone gets you to your full number by a normal retirement age, so new contributions become optional. Barista FIRE describes covering part of your expenses from savings and the rest from lighter, lower-pressure work rather than aiming for a full stop. Both are just variations on the same expenses-divided-by-rate math above, applied to a partial rather than a full target.
Curious how this compares with a standard retirement timeline instead of an early one? The retirement calculator runs a similar projection against a traditional retirement age, and the savings withdrawal calculator shows how long a given nest egg actually lasts once you start drawing it down.
The math is identical, expenses divided by a withdrawal rate. The word FIRE (financial independence, retire early) mostly describes retiring well before the traditional mid-60s range, which means the resulting nest egg has to survive a much longer payout period, often 40 years or more instead of 20 to 25.
Coast FIRE means you have already saved enough that compounding alone, with no further contributions, will grow to your full FIRE number by a normal retirement age, so you can stop saving aggressively. Barista FIRE means you have enough saved to cover part of your expenses and plan to cover the rest with part-time or lower-stress work rather than fully stopping.
A 4% withdrawal rate was tested against roughly 30-year retirements. Someone retiring at 40 might need the money to last 50 years or more, and a longer horizon leaves less room for a run of bad early returns. Many FIRE planners use 3% to 3.5% specifically to build in that extra cushion, which raises the target nest egg.
It is the risk that poor market returns hit early in retirement, before the portfolio has had time to recover, rather than the risk of poor average returns overall. Two retirees with identical average lifetime returns can end up with very different outcomes depending on the order those returns arrived in. This calculator does not model that risk; it only shows a smooth average projection.
No, healthcare is folded into whatever annual expense figure you enter. Anyone planning to retire before 65, when Medicare eligibility starts, should budget realistically for private insurance or marketplace premiums separately, since that cost can be substantial and is easy to underestimate in an early-retirement plan.