FIRE Calculator
When Can I Retire?
FIRE, an acronym for "Financial Independence, Retire Early", is a movement that involves saving and investing money so that early retirement is possible via self-sustaining investment returns.
This interactive early retirement calculator for FIRE is specially designed to be super flexible but yet extremely easy to use. Enter your details into the fields below to estimate when you can retire and see how your net worth changes depending on when you retire.
Years until Retirement0
Years Until FIRE
Retirement Age0
FIRE Age
Net Worth At Retirement$ 0
FIRE Number
| Age | Income | Expenses | Savings | Investment Returns | Expected Retirement Spending* | Change in Net Worth | Net Worth | Amount Needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
* Note about the "expected retirement spending" column. If your withdrawal rate is lower than your investment return rate (which provides a margin of safety), retirement is not at the point when returns fully cover expenses, but some time after.
Summary of Results
The results below are based on the default values above. Enter your own values into the retirement calculator above to get your own personalized and interactive results estimating when you'll be able to retire along with a detailed summary down here.
Given the income and expenses that you've provided, your annual savings rate will be 0 % per year.
For retirement, if you currently expect an annual spending of 0 and are targeting a withdrawal rate of 0 of your net worth each year for your spending, the estimated initial amount you'll need is 0. This needed amount is calculated by taking your retirement spending and dividing by your withdrawal rate. Within the FIRE community, this amount is often called the FIRE number, FIRE amount, or FIRE target.
However, since you have specified a positive value for inflation, which increases how much things cost with time, your expenses and expected retirement spending will increase with time too. As a result, the net worth you'll need in order to retire will also increase with time. Essentially, it has become a moving target.
That being said, if you want simpler calculations and want to stick with the simplified way of thinking about how much money you'll need (with it being a singular non-changing number) or are certain you can control your retirement spending to be the same every year, simply enter 0% for the inflation field. If you want inflation to affect only your expenses and not your expected retirement spending, enter 0% for inflation, but enter the inflation rate into the growth field for the rows that correspond to your expenses.
However, since you have specified a negative value for inflation, which means deflation and decreases how much things cost with time, your expenses and expected retirement spending will decrease with time too. As a result, the net worth you'll need in order to retire will also decrease with time. Essentially, it has become a moving target. That being said, if you want simpler calculations or are certain your retirement spending will be the same every year, simply enter 0% for the inflation field. If you want deflation to affect only your expenses and not your expected retirement spending, enter 0% for inflation, but enter the deflation rate into the growth field for the rows that correspond to your expenses.
By considering the details that you've provided and calculating when your net worth reaches the amount needed for retirement, we estimate that you'll be able to successfully retire in 0 years at the age of 0 with a net worth of 0. Through the graph above, you're able to see how much higher a net worth you'll be able to attain if you delay retirement for a couple years which can provide extra safety and help decrease the chance of running out of money in retirement.
Feel free to try adjusting your details above to see what happens given different scenarios!
After going through the calculations with the details you've provided, unfortunately, a successful and full retirement that only relies on investments for retirement spending does not seem possible. Your estimated future net worth never reaches the amount needed for retirement. The graph above should show how close or how far away you are.
Don't fret though. In this case, try lowering your expenses, increasing your income, seeking out new forms of income, or lowering your expected retirement spending. When thinking about expected spending in retirement, don't forget about social security, which will help cover some costs and lower the expected spending you'll need to cover yourself. You may also consider different forms of early retirement. For example, two alternative forms include barista FIRE and coast FIRE. The former involves a partial retirement phase involving easy work which may be part-time. In other words, if full early retirement is not possible, partial early retirement might still be.
Try adjusting your details above to see what happens given different scenarios.
To learn more about FIRE and our calculator, continue reading below!
Early Retirement Calculators
Investomatica's FIRE Calculator
Mobile friendly and easy to use web application
- A modern, clean and dynamic interface that's easy to use and also works just as well on mobile phones as it does on desktop computers. Our web application is also completely free to use.
Flexible and customizable
- With a fine tuned balance between flexibility, customization, and usability, our FIRE calculator supports an extremely wide variety of possible scenarios while ensuring uncompromised ease of use.
- Want to see how a large one time purchase or windfall will impact your timeline? Perhaps you're interested in how additional income from a temporary side hustle will help out? Our calculator supports all this and much more.
International support
- Designed with a global design philosophy, our FIRE calculator can be used regardless of where you're working and saving, whether that be locally or as an expat in an international location.
Automatic calculations and saving
- Our FIRE calculator will automatically calculate and re-calculate as you enter and change values.
- Visit often? Our calculator saves you time by automatically saving your last entered numbers and options so you can pick up right where you left off. Note that all data is only stored locally on your browser. If you want to reset the calculator, there's a handy "reset calculator" button. Alternatively, clearing your browser cache works too.
Special notes
- This calculator is only meant to simulate pre-retirement. The data shown after your estimated retirement age serves to illustrate how much higher your net worth would be if you continue working and serves as a point of reference. For example, one common question is "what would my net worth be if I work just a couple years longer".
- This depends on where you're located, but most jobs will incur income tax that is automatically withheld and taken out by your employer. The income fields in this calculator expect numbers that represent what your income is after tax. If you're considering switching to a new job for a higher salary, but aren't sure what the income will be after tax, check out our income tax calculators. You'll get an estimated take home pay number with which you can plug into this early retirement FIRE calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does FIRE stand for?
FIRE is an acronym that stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, which is a movement and approach to life that advocates for saving and investing most of your income so that early retirement is possible. This calculator estimates when you can retire and the amount of money needed for early retirement.
Is it possible to retire early?
The chances of attaining early retirement can be improved by putting effort into educating yourself about personal finance, increasing your savings, and reducing your expenses. Making use of a calculator to estimate different scenarios is a good idea.
Quick overview about FIRE
The name of the game with FIRE is all about saving and investing money so that it grows via the power of compound interest. The more you can save, the more you can invest, the faster your net worth grows. The goal here is financial autonomy and financial independence with a net worth that is self-sustaining through investment returns. This way, you no longer need to rely on a job for income. Afterwards, many choose to retire early so that they're fully able to spend more time on things important to them like family, hobbies, etc.
Decisions you make with your finances affect how your net worth develops with time. This calculator aims to estimate and illustrate how changes affect your FIRE timeline.
The FIRE movement also exists in several forms. These include Lean FIRE, Fat FIRE, Barista FIRE, and Coast FIRE. We'll go over the lean and fat variations below. For the barista and coast variations, those are quite a bit more different and also involve a completely different calculator, so we've isolated those to their own pages to keep things clean.
Quick overview about Lean FIRE
Lean FIRE is a subset of the FIRE movement that revolves around lower budgets and lower expenses. This allows many more people to participate in the journey to financial freedom. By lowering your expected spending in retirement, the amount of money you'll need to save up can be reduced and in some cases even be reduced quite dramatically.
To achieve lower expenses, it's critical to outline exactly what's important in your life. There are often many unnecessary luxuries that we can forgo with little to no detriment to our lifestyles. You might be surprised by how many things you can live without and still be happy.
One way to make this easier is through finding deals and discounts within the competitive marketplaces around us. With a bit of savvy shopping, you might be amazed at how much you can save without giving up the things you love.
Yet another way many approach lean FIRE is by planning on moving to a place with a lower cost of living. With the rise of remote work, this has becoming more and more a possibility for many.
Quick overview about Fat FIRE
Fat FIRE is a subset of the FIRE movement that revolves around much larger budgets and higher expenses. It's primarily aimed for those with high incomes and an expectation of an expensive lifestyle.
Although one of the fundamental factors of FIRE consists of saving money, it's still possible to pursue financial independence for a high expense lifestyle provided you have the means and opportunity to do so. There are certainly many professionals in high paying jobs that have the ability to collect quite a fortune through their careers.
Expected annual spending in retirement
In order to estimate your expected annual spending in retirement, you need to think about what kind of lifestyle you want. There are also age dependent factors as well. Depending on the age at which you retire, medicare and other government benefits may be available for you and help lower costs. Social security may be available and the income from that will help cover some spending. If you will have a pension, that will further help to lower the amount of spending you yourself have to cover with your own savings. Additionally, if you have a mortgage, if may be fully paid off by retirement, so you might no longer have mortgage payments by then. These are just a few examples, but it's important to note that spending in retirement may be lower than what you expect at first glance.
Amount needed for retirement
The amount of money you'll need for retirement is calculated by dividing your expected annual spending in retirement by your chosen withdrawal rate. Financial independence and full retirement is possible when your net worth surpasses this needed amount.
Participants in the FIRE movement call this needed amount the FIRE number, FIRE amount, or FIRE target.
Annual withdrawal rate in retirement
When in retirement, what will ultimately pay the bills is your saved money and investments. In other words, you'll have to withdrawal a small portion of your net worth each year to pay off expenses. So the withdrawal rate you choose heavily affects when you'll be able to retire.
Assuming your net worth stays intact, a high annual withdrawal rate will mean a lower net worth is required for retirement while a low annual withdrawal rate will mean a higher net worth is required. While we can on purposely choose a higher withdrawal rate, we also need our investments to back this up. If you withdraw money from your net worth faster than it can grow, your net worth won't stay intact and will dwindle with time. So there's a fine balance that must be taken here.
There have been many studies on different withdrawal rates. One of the most well known research publications was written by three professors from Trinity University in 1998. Informally, this study is called the Trinity Study. The goal was to identify the probability of successful retirements given different withdrawal rates. Long story short, their research suggested that withdrawal rates between 3% and 4% were extremely unlikely to exhaust any portfolio of stocks and bonds during periods of 15 to 30 years. As a result, many like to think of 4% as being a relatively safe withdrawal rate.
How does inflation affect early retirement?
Inflation is a phenomenon that raises the cost of things over time while deflation lowers the cost of things over time. Our calculator shows all results in current dollars for intuitive and easy to understand results.
What most people expect to spend in retirement is based on how much things cost now. With inflation, things will cost more in the future, so your expected lifestyle in retirement will also cost more in the future. This then affects the amount of money needed. In other words, the amount of money you'll need for retirement will change with time.
Ultimately, inflation has a negative impact on finances and delays retirement. You'll either need your income and investments to keep up or take efforts to reduce and control spending so that the effects of inflation are limited.
Note that inflation can rise and fall with time as well. The inflation field in our calculator expects an average inflation rate.
Disclaimer
- The numbers and results produced are simply estimates based on the values that you have provided. Future results are not guaranteed.
- Our content is neither retirement advice nor financial planning advice. Everything is strictly for educational purposes only.
- It is your responsibility to conduct your own due diligence or consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any decision or taking on any action.
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