FIRE & Early Retirement Calculator
↻ Updated 2026Find out how many years until your investments can cover your lifestyle — using the 4% rule and your own assumptions. Nothing is stored; everything runs in your browser.
Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your FIRE result
Years to FI is the honest headline: it's how long your current savings rate needs to hold before your portfolio can cover your spending. Your FIRE number falls out of one input — annual spending — which is why cutting spending moves the date twice as hard as earning more.
How your FIRE number and timeline are calculated
This calculator does two things. First it sets the target: the portfolio that can fund your spending indefinitely at your chosen withdrawal rate. Then it compounds your portfolio forward, year by year, adding your annual savings, until the balance reaches that target.
The target is the 4% rule stated as a multiple. Withdraw 4% a year and you need 25× your annual spending, because 1 ÷ 0.04 = 25. Withdraw 3.5% and the multiple becomes roughly 29×. The two ideas — the 4% rule and the 25× rule — are the same arithmetic read from opposite ends.
FIRE number = annual spending ÷ withdrawal rate annual saving = income − annual spending repeat each year until balance ≥ FIRE number: balance = balance × (1 + real return) + annual saving
- annual spending
- What your life costs in a year, in today's money — the single most important input — it sets the target and what's left to save
- withdrawal rate
- The share of the portfolio you plan to draw in year one — 4% is the classic default; 3.5% is the conservative case for a long retirement
- income
- Your annual take-home pay — after tax, not gross — the model subtracts spending from this directly and applies no tax of its own, so entering gross will overstate what you can save
- real return
- Expected annual portfolio return after inflation — a 7% nominal return with 3% inflation is a 4% real return
- balance
- What you have invested today, compounded forward each year — excludes home equity — see the FAQ below
Two details matter. Returns are real, meaning inflation is already stripped out, so every dollar in the projection is a dollar of today's purchasing power and your spending figure doesn't need an inflation adjustment. And savings are added at the end of each year rather than monthly, which is mildly conservative — real contributions made through the year earn a little more than this shows. If you want to see the raw compounding without the FIRE framing, the compound interest calculator uses the same engine.
Worked examples
Example: a 32-year-old earning $135,000 and spending $60,000
These are the calculator's defaults, so you can follow along on the page. The portfolio starts at $145,000, the return is 5% real, and the withdrawal rate is 4%.
| FIRE number$60,000 ÷ 0.04 — i.e. 25× spending | $1,500,000 |
| Annual saving$135,000 − $60,000 = 56% of income | $75,000 |
| Year 1 balance$145,000 × 1.05 + $75,000 | $227,250 |
| Year 12 balancestill short of the target | $1,454,184 |
| Year 13 balancefirst year at or above $1,500,000 | $1,601,893 |
| Years to FIreached at age 45 | 13 |
| Monthly income then$1,500,000 × 4% ÷ 12 | $5,000 |
Thirteen years, at age 45. Note that the balance overshoots to $1.6M rather than landing exactly on $1.5M — the projection compounds in whole years, so the year you cross the line you cross it decisively.
Example: the same person cuts spending to $50,000
Nothing else changes — same age, same portfolio, same income, same return. Only annual spending drops by $10,000. Watch both halves of the equation move at once.
| FIRE numberdown $250,000, because the target is 25× spending | $1,250,000 |
| Annual savingup $10,000 — now 63% of income | $85,000 |
| Years to FIreached at age 42 | 10 |
| Change vs the first examplefrom one $10,000 change | 3 years earlier |
Cutting spending by $10,000 a year pulled financial independence forward by three years. A $10,000 raise would not have come close, because it only adds to savings — it doesn't lower the target. That asymmetry is the single most useful thing this calculator has to tell you.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 4% rule still safe in 2026?
It's contested, and the honest answer is that reasonable experts now disagree by a wide margin. Morningstar's 2026 guidance puts the safe starting withdrawal rate nearer 3.9% for a balanced portfolio, and some analyses argue for 3.5% or lower given current bond yields. Meanwhile William Bengen — who derived the original 4% rule in 1994 — raised his own SAFEMAX to 4.7% in his 2025 book for a more diversified portfolio.
The gap matters more for early retirees than for anyone else. Bengen's rule was calibrated to a 30-year retirement. If you stop working at 45, you may be funding 45 or 50 years, and the arithmetic that survived three decades of history is not the arithmetic that survives five. Use the withdrawal-rate slider to see it directly: at 4% you need 25× spending; at 3.5% you need roughly 29×.
How much do I need to retire early?
Twenty-five times your annual spending, if you accept a 4% withdrawal rate. Spend $60,000 a year and the target is $1.5 million. Spend $50,000 and it's $1.25 million.
The number keys off spending, not income — which is why two people earning identical salaries can have FIRE numbers half a million dollars apart. If you prefer the conservative framing, 3.5% implies roughly 29× and 3% implies 33×.
How do I access my 401(k) or IRA before 59½?
This is the gap most FIRE calculators, including this one, quietly ignore: it models whether you have enough, not whether you can legally touch it. There are three established routes. A Roth conversion ladder converts traditional balances to Roth each year and withdraws them after a five-year seasoning period — the most flexible option, and the reason many early retirees start converting five years before they stop working. SEPP under IRC §72(t) allows penalty-free substantially-equal payments, but once started they must continue for the longer of five years or until 59½, and modifying them triggers retroactive penalties plus interest. The Rule of 55 lets you draw from your most recent employer's 401(k) if you leave at 55 or later — useless for a 45-year-old, and permanently lost if you roll that 401(k) into an IRA.
Most early retirees bridge with taxable savings for the first five years while the first ladder rung seasons. If you're weighing the conversion side, the Roth conversion calculator models the tax cost of each rung.
Does my house count toward my FIRE number?
Generally no, and this calculator assumes it doesn't. Home equity is part of your net worth by the standard definition, but it produces no income until you sell, refinance or borrow against it — and if you sell, you still need somewhere to live. A paid-off house helps enormously by lowering annual spending, which lowers your target. It just isn't part of the portfolio doing the withdrawing.
The usual practice is to track two numbers: total net worth including the house, and liquid net worth without it. Only the second belongs in the "Invested today" field above. The net worth calculator tracks both.
Should I enter a real or nominal return?
Real — the field is labelled "Expected real return" for that reason. A real return has inflation already subtracted, so a 7% nominal return alongside 3% inflation is a 4% real return, and the default of 5% real is roughly an 8% nominal return in a 3% inflation world.
This is the most common way to get a badly wrong answer from a FIRE calculator. Enter 8% here thinking of historical stock returns and you're implicitly claiming your costs will never rise, which compounds an error across every year of the projection. If you'd rather reason in nominal terms, the honest move is to inflate your spending too — but it's easier to work in today's dollars, which is what this tool does.
What this FIRE calculator doesn't account for
This is a projection, not a plan. It answers one narrow question — when does the portfolio cross the target — and deliberately leaves out several things that decide whether early retirement actually works.
- Tax — There is none in the model. Savings are simply income minus spending, which is why the income field must be your take-home pay — enter gross and the tool will credit you with saving money the IRS already took. Withdrawals in retirement are taxed too: a dollar from a traditional 401(k) is not a dollar of spending.
- Sequence-of-returns risk — The projection compounds a constant return every year. Real markets don't. A bad first five years hurts far more than the same losses later, because you're selling shares while they're cheap — and the 4% rule's blind spot is precisely those early years.
- Healthcare before Medicare — Retire at 45 and you have twenty years to cover before Medicare. For many US early retirees this is the largest single line in the budget and the one most exposed to policy change. It belongs in your spending figure, and most people underestimate it.
- Constant spending — Life is lumpy — a roof, a car, a child, a parent. The model assumes a flat real spend forever, which is a reasonable planning average and a poor description of any actual year.
- Whether you can reach the money — Crossing the target doesn't mean you can spend it. Balances locked in retirement accounts need a bridge strategy before 59½ — see the FAQ above.
- ·Trinity Study / 4% safe withdrawal rate — Bengen (1994) and the Trinity Study (1998) — basis for the 4% rule
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.