FIRE Calculator

It is the wealth at which work becomes optional, because a sustainable draw from the portfolio covers your spending. The arithmetic is one division: annual spending divided by the withdrawal rate. Spending 30,000 a year at a 3% withdrawal rate needs 30,000 / 0.03 = 1,000,000, and the same spending at 4% needs 750,000. The number is expressed in today's money, so you can compare it directly with what you have invested now.

The withdrawal rate is the share of your portfolio you draw as income in the first year of financial independence, with the plan of sustaining that spending. The famous 4% comes from William Bengen's 1994 study and the Trinity study, both based on historical US stock and bond returns over 30-year retirements. More recent research by Anarkulova, Cederburg, O'Doherty and Sias (2025), using a broad sample of developed markets rather than the unusually lucky US record, points to about 2.7% for a similar level of safety, and early retirees face longer horizons than either study assumes. The 3% default is a conservative middle ground; a lower rate means a safer plan and a higher FIRE number.

From the standard future value of a portfolio with yearly savings: current wealth compounds at the real return, each year's savings are added at the year's end, and the calculator solves that formula for the time at which the total reaches the FIRE number. The answer is therefore a fraction of years, displayed to one decimal, rather than a whole number. At a 0% real return the formula degrades to simple division, the remaining gap over the annual savings, and if your portfolio already covers the target the answer is zero.

Because in the classic FIRE arithmetic it works on both sides at once: saving a larger share of income grows the portfolio faster and proves you can live on less, which lowers the spending the portfolio must eventually fund. The savings rate table in this calculator deliberately isolates the first effect. It holds your retirement spending fixed and varies only the amount saved, so the years fall less steeply than in the classic curve. If saving more would also lower your permanent spending, reduce the spending input and watch the target itself drop.

A real return, meaning after inflation. The calculator keeps every figure in today's money: the spending you enter, the FIRE number, and the projected wealth are all at today's prices, and that only stays consistent if growth is measured net of inflation too. A diversified equity portfolio has historically delivered roughly 4 to 5% real over long horizons, which is why the presets are 2, 4, and 5%. Do not enter a nominal 7 or 8% here, and do not subtract inflation from a return that is already real.

It is a deterministic projection with a smooth, constant return, so it does not model market crashes, sequence-of-returns risk, or a probability of success the way a Monte Carlo simulation would. It also excludes taxes on investment income and withdrawals, fund and platform fees, and any state or employer pension, which for most people eventually replaces part of the spending; check how your own country taxes the wealth you plan to live on. Savings are credited once a year rather than monthly, a slightly conservative simplification. Treat the date as a planning horizon, not a promise.