FIRE, Costed: Every Variant in Years

Financial independence, defined

Financial independence is the point where your invested assets can cover your spending without you working. It is not a lifestyle, a personality or a movement — it is a ratio between two numbers you control: what you spend, and what you have invested.

The arithmetic is one line. Take your annual spending and divide it by the rate you intend to withdraw each year. At a 4% withdrawal rate that is the same as multiplying spending by 25, which is where the familiar "25 times your expenses" comes from. Spend $48,000 a year and the target is $1,200,000. Spend $32,000 and it is $800,000. The number is that sensitive to spending, which is why cutting costs does double duty — it lowers the target and raises what you can add each year at the same time.

"Retire early" is the part people argue about, and it is optional. Most people who reach the number keep working at something; what changes is that the work no longer has to pay. That distinction is why the work & life desk exists alongside this one, and why The Exit Interview keeps finding that the number was the easy part.

The five variants, costed from one set of inputs

Lean, barista, coast and fat FIRE get written about as though they were different philosophies. They are the same division with different inputs. Below, all five run on one worked example — a 34-year-old with $90,000 invested, adding $24,000 a year, at a 4.39% return after inflation (7% nominal against 2.5% inflation) and a 4% withdrawal rate. Change any input on the FI number calculator and every row moves.

Two things fall out of that table that no explainer of this subject seems to print. Barista FIRE is eight years earlier than FIRE on identical savings, because $20,000 of part-time income removes $500,000 from the target — which makes a modest ongoing income worth more than most people's entire investment strategy. And fat FIRE is nine years past FIRE, not a slightly nicer version of it: the last $800,000 costs more time than the first $800,000 earned.

Coast FIRE is the odd one out because it is a balance rather than a finish line. At $392,666 invested, a 34-year-old can stop contributing entirely and still arrive at $1,200,000 by 60 — see the Coast FIRE calculator for your own version. It buys job choice rather than freedom from work — often the more useful thing, as the remote-work desk keeps finding.

The withdrawal rate, and why half a point is two years

The 4% figure comes from the Trinity study, which tested 30-year retirements. A retirement that starts at 40 may need to last 50 years, which is why long-horizon planners commonly model 3.25% to 3.5% instead. It was never a rule, and every page that presents it as one is skipping the part that changes your answer.

Four years separate the top and bottom rows, on identical spending and identical saving. That is the single most consequential assumption in the whole exercise, and it is a judgement about how long you will live and how markets will behave — not an input you should accept from a page like this one. Pick it deliberately, write down why, and revisit it rather than inheriting it — our research desk prices each rate in years so you can see what the choice costs.

The path, in the order that actually matters

1. Work out the two numbers. Annual spending and current invested total. Everything else is derived, and the calculator does the derivation in about thirty seconds — the glossary defines anything unfamiliar.
2. Raise the savings rate before the salary. It works from both ends — more added, less needed — which is why the savings-rate calculator is the one worth opening monthly. A raise you spend moves nothing.
3. Automate the contribution. The transfer you never see removes the decision, which is the whole mechanism the mindset desk is about, and the habit every guest names first.
4. Add income that is not your salary. An extra $500 a month invested takes about three years off a 24-year timeline — the side-hustle desk has 22 ways to find it and the arithmetic for each.
5. Cut the fixed costs, not the small pleasures. Housing, transport and insurance are where a target actually falls; the remote-work desk covers how much of that is location-dependent, and work & life what the commute inside it costs.
6. Decide your withdrawal rate deliberately, then leave it alone for a year at a time.

The savings rate beats the salary

This is the single most useful idea in the subject and the one the institutional pages state without demonstrating. Your savings rate is the share of take-home pay you do not spend, and it appears on both sides of the equation at once: a higher rate raises the amount you add each year and lowers the target you are adding towards, because the target is a multiple of your spending.

Work it through on the same example. Take home $72,000 and spend $48,000, and you save $24,000 — a rate of 33.3% — against a target of $1,200,000, which arrives in 24 years. Now cut spending to $40,000 without earning another dollar. You save $32,000, a rate of 44.4%, and the target falls to $1,000,000 because it is 25 times a smaller number. Both ends moved, and the date moves several years on the calculator, which is why the savings-rate calculator is the one to open every month rather than the FI number.

Now do the same thing with a raise you spend. Take home $82,000, spend $58,000, and you still save $24,000 — but your target has risen to $1,450,000 because your spending defines it. A raise taken entirely as lifestyle moves your finish line away from you while feeling like progress, which is the trap the mindset desk spends most of its time on. The salary is not irrelevant; it is simply worthless here unless the gap widens — see the savings-rate tool.

The gap in the institutional FIRE pages

It is worth saying plainly, because it explains why this page exists. The pages currently holding the top of this search are published by asset managers, brokers, insurers, an encyclopedia and two subreddits. Measured across the four we read closely, coverage of the FIRE variants runs between zero and 0.34 mentions per hundred words, and arithmetic language between zero and 0.58. One of them explains FIRE across more than four thousand words without multiplying anything at all.

None of it is dishonest, and none of them is hard-selling — the product language is negligible. They are credibility pages, and they answer the definitional question competently — who we are is a different proposition. But a reader who arrives asking "how much, and how long" leaves with adjectives, and the two tables above are the whole reason to read a newsroom on this instead. We sell no funds, run no advisory service and take no commission on this page, which is the only reason our arithmetic is worth more than theirs.

The 5 things that break an early-retirement plan

• Sequence of returns. A bad first few years while you are withdrawing does damage that the same average return later would not, because you sell units at the bottom to eat. It is the risk the 4% rule exists to bound, and it is why the scenario rows on our calculator matter more than the headline year, as the crypto desk shows in harsher form.
• Health insurance before Medicare, if you are American. Between an early retirement date and 65 there is a gap that has to be funded privately, and it is the line most plans understate by the largest absolute amount. Price it before you set a date, using your own numbers rather than a default.
• Inflation on a fixed drawdown. Every figure on this page is in today's dollars for exactly this reason; a plan built on nominal returns quietly overstates itself, which is why the calculators net inflation off first.
• Longevity. A 30-year test does not answer a 50-year question, which is the whole argument for a lower withdrawal rate.
• Lifestyle drift after the number. The savings rate that got you there is the one most likely to slip the month you stop needing it — the behaviour outlasts the arithmetic.

Using these FIRE numbers without fooling yourself

Three habits separate a plan from a daydream, and none of them is about picking investments.

• Write the assumptions down next to the answer. A target of $1,200,000 means nothing without the 4% and the 4.39% that produced it. When you revisit it in a year, the assumptions are what you are checking, not the number.
• Re-run the pessimistic version every time. Two points off the return and half a point off the withdrawal rate is not a doom scenario, it is an ordinary decade — the scenario rows on the calculator exist so that the pessimistic answer is always one click away rather than a thing you avoid.
• Track the savings rate monthly and the target annually. The rate is the input you control and it moves; the target only moves when your spending does. Checking the target monthly is how people end up making investment decisions on market noise.

And one thing not to do: do not set a date before you have priced health cover, because in the US that single line has ended more early retirements than any market has. It belongs in your spending figure from the first calculation, not as an adjustment later.

Questions people ask about FIRE

Latest from the money desk

The money desk across the rest of the site

• FI number calculator — the figure every row on this page comes from.
• Coast FIRE calculator — the balance that grows on its own.
• Savings-rate calculator — the input that moves your date most.
• Quit-your-job runway — the number people actually resign on.
• Side hustles — what an extra $500 a month is worth in years.
• Remote work — and what a pay cut with no commute really costs.
• Crypto earning — why a real percentage can still be a loss.
• Work & life — what your current arrangement costs per hour.
• Mindset — why the plan stalls after a win.
• The Exit Interview — people who reached a number and what happened next.
• Glossary — safe withdrawal rate, sequence risk, real return, all defined.
• Research — the data work behind the reporting.

Method and limits. Every figure on this page is arithmetic on stated inputs — $90,000 invested, $24,000 saved a year, 4.39% real return, spending as shown — and each is reproducible on our own calculators, which is the only reason to believe any of it. The model is deterministic: steady growth after inflation, yearly contributions, no tax, no sequence modelling. We sell nothing, recommend no product and take no commission on this page. Nothing here is financial advice. Editorial policy · how we make money · corrections.