When can I actually retire?

Your retirement date is driven far less by how much you earn and far more by what percentage of your income you save. That sounds like a slogan, but the mechanics are precise: a high savings rate does two powerful things at once. It builds your nest egg faster, and — because you're living on a smaller share of your income — it shrinks the nest egg you need in the first place. The second effect is the one people forget, and it's why a big raise you spend barely moves your retirement date while a higher savings rate moves it a lot.

The rough rule, which holds surprisingly well across income levels: at a 10% savings rate you're looking at roughly a full career — 40-plus years — to fund retirement. At 25% it's closer to 30 years. At 50% you could be financially independent in around 17 years, and at 65% in roughly a decade — regardless of your actual salary. Someone earning $60,000 who saves half will reach independence years before someone earning $200,000 who saves a tenth. That's the counterintuitive heart of the FIRE movement.

The target number itself comes from the 4% rule. Decades of market history suggest a portfolio of about 25× your annual spending has a high chance of lasting 30-plus years, because withdrawing 4% a year has historically been slow enough for growth to keep pace. Spend $60,000 a year and your number is around $1.5 million. Notice what that means: every $1,000 you trim from annual spending drops your target by about $25,000, and lowers the amount you need to save each month to get there. Cutting spending works both ends of the equation.

The 4% figure isn't a law of physics, though. It came from a specific 30-year study, and for a longer retirement — or a nervous one — many planners now favour something closer to 3.5%. That's the difference between needing 25× and nearly 29× your spending, which is not trivial. Pressure-test your own number and withdrawal rate with the safe-withdrawal calculator before you trust any single figure.

Two forces will try to pull your plan off course, and both belong in the model. Inflation quietly raises the spending your portfolio has to cover, so a target set in today's dollars needs to grow. And sequence-of-returns risk — a bad market in your first few retirement years — can do lasting damage even if the long-run average is fine. Work out the size of your target with the how-much-to-retire calculator, then map the timeline to get there with the FIRE calculator.

Getting there faster is the same lever pulled harder: raise the savings rate. That usually means widening the gap between what you earn and what you spend, which is exactly where the rest of the site helps — deciding whether to pay off debt or invest the surplus, and choosing Roth or Traditional so more of your growth is shielded from tax along the way.