FIRE & Coast FIRE Calculator

Free · no sign-up · reviewed September 2026

FIRE means Financial Independence, Retire Early: saving enough that work becomes optional. This calculator turns that into a date. Enter what you earn, spend, and have invested, and it shows your FIRE number and how many years until you hit it.

Switch to Coast FIRE to see a different milestone: the point where what you've already invested will grow into your FIRE number by a normal retirement age, so you could stop saving and just cover your spending.

Drag to adjust

Your numbers

What do you want to know?

Your age now

Take-home pay / year

You spend / year

Invested so far

Annual return (after inflation)

Returns here are net of inflation, so your target is in today's dollars. US stocks averaged about 10% a year before inflation from 1928 to 2025, or roughly 7% after it. Lower it if you hold a lot of bonds or your timeline is short.

Withdrawal rate

You could reach FIRE in

20 years

A $1,125,000 nest egg, around age 50

💡 Saving $25,000 a year (36% of your take-home) puts you on track for your $1,125,000 number in about 20 years, around age 50. At $45,000 a year of spending, that's regular FIRE territory. Raising your savings rate is the single fastest way to pull that date closer.

$1,125,000

Your FIRE number

4% rule

36%

Savings rate

of take-home

FIRE age

in 20 yrs

NowAge 40Age 50

Net worth$1,140,978
FIRE number$1,125,000

Annual savings: $25,000
Savings rate: 36%
Your FIRE number: $1,125,000
Years to FIRE: 20
Age at FIRE: 50

FIRE Calculator · Far Better Off

https://farbetteroff.com/calculators/fire-calculator

Open that link to get this calculator back with these exact numbers. Estimates for education only — Far Better Off is not a lender or a financial advisor, and these results are not financial advice.

The 2-minute guide

Your number is 25x your spending

At the 4% rule, you're financially independent once your investments reach about 25 times your annual spending. Spend $45,000 a year and that's roughly $1.1 million. Notice it's driven by spending, not income: cut what you spend and the target drops.

Savings rate is everything

The share of your take-home pay you invest matters far more than your salary. A higher rate builds the nest egg faster and shrinks the lifestyle you have to fund, so it moves the finish line from both ends. Try nudging spending down and watch the years fall.

Coast FIRE comes much sooner

Because money invested early has decades to compound, the amount you need today to coast is a fraction of your full FIRE number. At a 7% real return, $1 invested at 30 roughly becomes $10.70 by 65. Hitting Coast FIRE doesn't mean quitting work; it means your paycheck only has to cover today.

Returns are after inflation

This uses a return net of inflation (a 'real' return), so your FIRE number is in today's dollars. The 7% default is the rough long-run average for a stock-heavy portfolio after inflation, since US stocks have historically returned around 10% a year before it. Returns are never guaranteed, vary a lot year to year, and a shorter timeline or a bigger bond allocation argues for a lower number.

Frequently asked questions

How is my FIRE number calculated?

It's your annual spending divided by your withdrawal rate. At the classic 4% rule that's spending times 25. Spend $50,000 a year and your FIRE number is about $1.25 million.

What is Coast FIRE?

Coast FIRE is having enough invested that, with no further contributions, growth alone will reach your full FIRE number by a traditional retirement age. After that you still work, but only to cover current spending instead of saving.

How is the Coast FIRE number calculated?

Divide your FIRE number by (1 + real return) raised to the years until retirement. With a $1.125 million FIRE number, a 7% real return and 35 years to go, that's about $105,000 needed today.

What is a good savings rate for FIRE?

Higher is faster. At a 7% real return, saving 25% of take-home pay points to roughly 28 working years, 50% to about 15, and 65% to about a decade, starting from zero. Most FIRE plans push the savings rate as high as comfortably possible.

What return rate should I use?

This calculator uses a return after inflation, so results are in today's dollars. Around 7% real is the common long-run assumption for a stock-heavy portfolio, based on US stocks averaging roughly 10% a year before inflation. Use a lower figure if you hold a lot of bonds or your timeline is short; actual returns vary and aren't guaranteed.

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