Financial Independence, Retire Early — find your number and your timeline
💡 Why This Matters FIRE turns "I want to retire early" into a specific dollar target and a real timeline. Your FIRE number is the portfolio size that could sustainably cover your annual expenses using a safe withdrawal rate — reach it, and work becomes optional.
The 4% rule traces back to a 1998 analysis known as the Trinity Study, named for the Texas university where its authors taught — it's one of the most-cited pieces of research in the entire personal finance and FIRE community.
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Your FIRE number is your annual expenses divided by your withdrawal rate (as a decimal) — at the standard 4% rate, that's the same as multiplying expenses by 25. From your current savings, the calculator projects monthly growth using your contribution and expected return, compounding until your balance reaches the FIRE number.
The FIRE number is the portfolio size that, at your chosen withdrawal rate, is projected to sustainably fund your annual expenses without running out. Years to FIRE is your real timeline based on current savings, ongoing contributions, and expected market returns — not a guarantee, but a realistic projection under the assumptions you've entered.
This assumes a constant annual return, which real markets never actually deliver — some years will be much better, others much worse, and sequence-of-returns risk (a market crash early in retirement) can matter more than the average return itself. The withdrawal rate debate is real and unresolved; treat any single number as a planning estimate, not a certainty.
Try the calculator with a couple of different withdrawal rates (3.5%, 4%, 4.5%) to see how sensitive your timeline is to that assumption — a lower rate means more safety margin but a longer timeline. Increasing your monthly contribution or reducing planned retirement expenses are the two levers most directly within your control for reaching FIRE sooner.
Example: $40,000/year in expenses at a 4% withdrawal rate gives a FIRE number of $1,000,000. Starting from $50,000 saved, contributing $1,500/month, at a 7% expected annual return: reaching that number takes 20.3 years.
The 4% rule comes from the 1998 Trinity Study, which found a 4% initial withdrawal (adjusted for inflation each year) historically survived a 30-year retirement in most market scenarios. It's the most widely cited FIRE benchmark, but it's genuinely debated — some argue 3.5% is safer for longer retirements, others say 4% is conservative. You can adjust the rate here to see how it changes your number.
Your realistic annual spending in retirement — not your current income, and not your current spending if it includes costs that would disappear (like retirement account contributions or a mortgage you'll have paid off). Estimate what you'd actually need to live on each year once you stop working.
Generally yes, but with a real cost — a lower rate means a larger required FIRE number, so it takes longer to reach financial independence. It's a genuine tradeoff between certainty and time, not a free choice, which is why the rate is worth thinking about rather than defaulting on autopilot.