Free the Wage Slave
Money news for people building an exit.
The Research Desk
Where this site does the arithmetic nobody else publishes. Every piece here is a table computed by the same code that runs our calculators, on assumptions we print, answering a question a reader actually asked. No survey statistic, no press release, no forecast — if a number here is wrong, it is wrong in a way you can check by changing an input.
Key takeaways
- Every figure on this desk is computed in code, not estimated — the same functions that run the calculators, so a page and a calculator can never disagree.
- Assumptions are printed on every piece. Change the salary, the spend or the withdrawal rate and the answer changes with it.
- Nothing here claims a fact about the outside world, which is why none of it needs a source. Where a piece does hang off a published figure, it says whose and links it.
What this desk publishes
Three kinds of thing, and nothing else. First, the arithmetic behind a claim everyone repeats — the 4% rule priced in years rather than quoted as a rule of thumb. Second, the comparison nobody runs, like the same percentage taken off spending and added to pay, which is not the same trade because a spending cut moves the target as well as the saving. Third, the price of a thing normally described in feelings: what avoidance costs, what waiting costs, what an unpaid commute is actually paid.
What this desk does not publish is a forecast, a survey finding, or a number we could not compute ourselves. Our mindset desk covers the behaviour; the money desk covers the events. This desk covers the maths, and it is the reason the rest of the site can be checked.
Latest from the research desk
Every FIRE target at three withdrawal rates
The withdrawal-rate table nobody publishes
A 3% raise and a 3% spending cut buy the same year — but only one lowers the target
How the numbers are made
One file. calc.py holds every formula this site publishes, and it is a port of
the JavaScript behind the calculators, so the two cannot drift. Running it asserts each formula
against a figure already printed on a built page — a real return of 4.39% on 7% nominal and
2.5% inflation, a $1,200,000 target on $48,000 of spending at 4%, 24 years to reach it from
$90,000 with $24,000 saved a year. If an assertion fails, nothing publishes.
The writing sits on top of that, never inside it. A figure that is neither in the computed table nor in a cited source's own copy stops the piece from being published at all, which is the only guard that reliably catches a plausible invention.
Method and limits. Every projection on this desk uses a real return after inflation and assumes contributions continue, which no real life does exactly. They are arithmetic on stated inputs, not predictions, and they are not financial advice. Corrections run dated at the top of the piece — how we handle them · editorial policy.