Coast 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. Check our intro section first if you're unfamiliar with coast FIRE.
This version of our early retirement calculator has been specially tuned for coast FIRE. 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 Coast FIRE0
Coast FIRE Age0
Net Worth At Coast Age$ 0
Net Worth At Full Retirement$ 0
Amount Needed to Fully Retire$ 0
Length of Coast Phase0 years
Full Retirement Delay Due To Coast FIRE0 years
| Age | Income | Expenses | Savings | Investment Returns | Expected Retirement Spending* | Change in Net Worth | Net Worth | Coast Amount | 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 for Coast FIRE
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 before your coast phase. This will then drop to 0 % during your coast phase because this is how coast FIRE is defined. If you still plan on saving during your coast phase, but simply at a lower rate (or even at a slight negative rate), that would be better classified as barista FIRE. To get results for barista FIRE, check out the version of this calculator that is specially tuned for barista FIRE here.
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 to coast to retirement (coast amount), we estimate that you'll be able to successfully reach coast FIRE and begin pre-retirement coasting in 0 years at the age of 0 with a net worth of 0. Your coast phase will last 0 years until your given full retirement age of 0 comes along. At that point, your net worth will have grown to 0 for full retirement.
For the sake of reference, if you forgo coast FIRE and continue as normal with making savings past your coast FIRE age, you would instead be able to retire in 0 years at the age of 0. In other words, coast FIRE delays full retirement by 0 years. That being said, this delay is not necessarily a bad thing since the whole premise behind coast FIRE is to make an even earlier pre-retirement coast phase possible by delaying full retirement.
Through the graph above, you're able to see how much earlier or how much later you'll be able to begin coasting depending on things like your income, expenses, and investment details.
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 early retirement through coast FIRE does not seem possible. Your estimated future net worth never reaches the amount needed to coast and also never reaches the amount needed to fully retire before your given retirement age. The graph above should show how close or how far away you are.
Don't fret though. In this case, try entering a later retirement age, 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.
Try adjusting your details above to see what happens given different scenarios.
To learn more about Coast FIRE and our calculator, continue reading below!
Early Retirement Calculators
Investomatica's Coast 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 coast 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 coast 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 coast 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 is coast FIRE?
Coast FIRE is a unique subset of the FIRE movement that advocates for a special pre-retirement phase where you no longer have to save money once your net worth reaches a certain point where it will continue growing through investments until full retirement. This calculator estimates when you can start coasting to retirement.
Is coast FIRE possible for me?
Whether or not coast FIRE is possible depends on a lot of factors including your income, expenses, savings, and investments. Making use of a calculator to estimate different scenarios is a good idea.
Quick overview about Coast FIRE
Coast FIRE is a subset of the FIRE movement that is similar to barista FIRE in that it adds a special pre-retirement phase before full retirement. The difference here is that the special pre-retirement phase does not involve switching to an easy, but lower paying job. Instead, the plan is to continue with your career working in your original job, most likely until a more traditional retirement age, but to simply stop saving money at a certain point. This way, you'll able to freely spend your salary without worry while you coast your way to the finish line of full retirement. In other words, coast FIRE focuses more purely on the financial independence (FI) side of FIRE and not so much on the retire early (RE) side of FIRE.
The point where you can stop saving money is when your net worth attains critical mass reaching a level where it can continue growing through investments alone without new contributions until it reaches the full amount you'll need to fully retire with. More details about this and how it is calculated can be found in its corresponding section below.
Coast FIRE allows you the opportunity to more freely spend your money but the trade off is that full retirement is delayed as a result of the lack of continued contributions during your pre-retirement coast phase. That being said, coast FIRE appeals to many because it's more similar to traditional retirement but offers way more flexibility through the special pre-retirement coast phase.
This version of our early retirement calculator is specially tuned to calculate your coast FIRE age and show the effects this coast phase has on your overall timeline.
If you want to learn even more, Financial Samurai has a great article about Coast Fire here.
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.
Amount needed in order to coast to retirement
With coast FIRE, the age at which you fully retire is a user defined input. It's something you select as a target age to aim for. As a result, we know how many years there are until full retirement at each age along with the full amount of money needed for full retirement.
By taking these details and incorporating them with the formula for compound interest, it's possible to calculate an amount at each age that's needed to coast to retirement via the compound effects of annual investment returns. This amount is often called the coast number, coast amount, or coast target. The closer you get to your target retirement age, the less time you have to coast and take advantage of compound interest. As a result, the closer you get to retirement, the higher the amount you need to coast will be until it eventually reaches the normal amount needed to fully retire at your target retirement age.
You're able to coast to retirement when your net worth reaches the amount needed to coast. Ideally, this will be sometime before your target retirement age. Afterwards, your net worth will follow the coast number because you won't be saving and making any new contributions to your investments.
Note that our calculator rebalances allocations annually so the coast number is also calculated with the assumption of annual rebalancing.
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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