FIRE Calculator

The 4% rule says you can withdraw 4% of your retirement savings in the first year, then raise that amount with inflation each year after, without running out of money. Your FIRE number is 25 times your yearly expenses.

Early retirees spend more years in retirement, so inflation has more time to eat away at their buying power. A $50,000-a-year lifestyle doubles to $100,000 a year in 24 years at 3% inflation, so you need a bigger starting fund.

The standard FIRE estimate is 25 times your annual expenses, which is the inverse of a 4% safe withdrawal rate. If you spend $4,000 a month ($48,000 a year), the target is about $1.2 million in today's money. Two adjustments matter for early retirees. First, inflation: the 25x figure is in today's money, so if retirement is 20 years away at 3% inflation the nominal target is substantially higher, this calculator does that conversion for you. Second, horizon: the 4% rule was tested on 30-year retirements; someone retiring at 40 may be drawing down for 50 years, so many early retirees plan on 3.25-3.5% withdrawals instead, which raises the multiple to roughly 28-31 times expenses. Cutting annual spending is the most powerful lever, because every unit of spending removed reduces the target by 25 units.

A safe withdrawal rate (SWR) is the percentage of your portfolio you can withdraw in the first year of retirement, and then adjust for inflation annually, with a low historical chance of running out of money. The well-known 4% figure comes from the Trinity Study, which tested US stock/bond portfolios over rolling 30-year retirements. For early retirement the honest answer is lower: over 40-60 year horizons, most analyses put a robust SWR around 3.25-3.5%, because a long retirement gives bad early markets more time to do damage (sequence-of-returns risk). Practical middle ground: plan your target at 3.5%, stay flexible on spending in bad market years, and remember that even modest part-time income in the first decade of early retirement dramatically improves survival odds because it reduces withdrawals exactly when the portfolio is most vulnerable.