Retirement & FIRE Calculator
How long until your investments could cover your spending? Enter your income, savings rate, and assumptions to estimate years to financial independence (FI).
Portfolio vs. FI target
How to use
- Enter take-home income and the share of it you save. Spending is assumed to be the rest.
- Enter your current invested balance and an expected real (after-inflation) return.
- Pick a withdrawal rate. 4% is the common rule of thumb, and lower is more conservative.
Formulas explained
Using real returns keeps everything in today's dollars. The model ignores taxes, raises, Social Security, and return sequencing.
Worked example Hypothetical
Hypothetical: $100,000 take-home, 50% savings rate, $0 invested, 5% real return, 4% withdrawal rate. Spending = $50,000, FI number = $1.25M, and years to FI ≈ 16.4. That is close to the well-known "50% savings rate ≈ 17 years" rule of thumb.
FAQ
Why does savings rate matter so much?
It raises your savings and lowers the spending you need to replace at the same time.
Is 4% safe?
The 4% rule comes from historical US studies over 30-year retirements. Longer retirements or lower expected returns argue for 3–3.5%.
Should I use nominal or real returns?
Real returns (nominal minus inflation) keep the FI number in today's dollars, which is how this calculator is designed.
Retirement and FIRE calculator explained for beginners
What this tool does
FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. This tool estimates the portfolio you would need to cover your spending, and how many years of saving it might take.
What each input means
- Annual take-home income
- What you earn after taxes in a year.
- Savings rate
- The percent of that income you invest.
- Current invested portfolio
- What you have invested now.
- Expected real return
- Yearly growth after inflation that you assume.
- Withdrawal rate
- The percent of the portfolio you plan to spend each year once retired.
How to read the results
Target is your yearly spending divided by the withdrawal rate. Years to FI is how long the projection takes to reach that target.
A short worked example (hypothetical)
Take-home $80,000, saving 30%: you spend $56,000 and invest $24,000 a year. At a 4% withdrawal rate the target is $56,000 ÷ 0.04 = $1.4 million.
Common mistakes
- Using a nominal return instead of a real (after-inflation) one.
- Forgetting healthcare and taxes in retirement spending.
- Treating a withdrawal rate as a guarantee that money will last.