Every Path to Financial Independence

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The movement is built on a simple but powerful idea: save and invest aggressively early in life, and your portfolio will eventually generate enough passive income to cover your expenses forever — making work entirely optional.

The foundation is the 4% rule (also called the 25× rule), derived from the 1994 Trinity Study. It states that a diversified portfolio can sustain a 4% annual withdrawal rate indefinitely through almost every historical market scenario. This means you need roughly 25 times your annual spending saved to retire safely. Spend $50,000/year? Your FIRE number is $1.25 million. Spend $80,000/year? You need $2 million.

What makes FIRE different from conventional retirement planning is urgency. Traditional planning assumes you work until 65. FIRE practitioners aim for 40s, 30s, or even earlier — by maximizing their savings rate, keeping expenses lean, and investing consistently in low-cost index funds. The math is unambiguous: every percentage point added to your savings rate takes years off your working life.

FIRE isn't one-size-fits-all. Lean FIRE is retiring on a frugal budget. Fat FIRE is retiring with abundant spending. Barista FIRE is semi-retiring with part-time income covering the gap. And Coast FIRE— often the first milestone people hit — is the point where you've saved enough that compound growth alone will carry your portfolio to retirement, even if you stop contributing entirely. Hitting Coast FIRE is transformative: the pressure to maximize every retirement contribution lifts, and you can make career choices based on fulfillment rather than financial necessity.

The calculators on this site cover every major FIRE milestone. Whether you're checking if you've already hit Coast FIRE, planning for Lean retirement, or figuring out how much more you need to save each month — start with the calculator that matches where you are right now.