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Journey step 1 · FIRE

FIRE Number Calculator

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, the point where your investments can cover your living expenses for life. This calculator estimates your FIRE number: the retirement corpus you need to become financially independent, and the investment it takes to get there.

How this works: Inflation-adjusted future expenses × your FIRE multiple = estimated target corpus. See how this calculation works

Your plan
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Your retirement corpus is calculated as a multiple of your estimated annual expenses at retirement (20×–40×).
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Your results
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You're on track for FIRE

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Need a more detailed retirement plan?

These results provide a high-level retirement estimate based on your current assumptions. For year-by-year retirement income planning, changing spending needs, one-time withdrawals and advanced retirement scenarios, try our Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP) or 2-Bucket Strategy calculators.

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When do you reach financial independence?

Your projected corpus climbs toward the dashed Target FIRE corpus line, the same figure shown in your results above. The marker shows the age you reach it. Click any year for the exact figures.

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Projected corpus Annual expenses (with inflation) Target FIRE corpus
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Annual Expenses (with inflation) {{ fireXDetail.expenses }} {{ fireXDetail.expensesSub }}
FIRE-X Number {{ fireXDetail.ratio }}

For advanced scenarios like extra spending or rising expenses, try our SWP or 2-Bucket Strategy calculators.

How your FIRE number is calculated

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Understanding the FIRE Number Calculator

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. Your FIRE number is the size of the invested pot that could cover your living costs without a salary. This calculator estimates that number for the year you plan to stop working, and the regular investment it would take to get there from what you have today.

It is most useful when you are setting a target rather than drawing down. If you already know your target and want to test how long the money lasts once you start withdrawing, the withdrawal calculators below model that side of the journey.

What each input means

Current age and planned retirement age
The gap between the two is your investing horizon. Everything else compounds over that number of years, so it is usually the single most influential input.
Current savings
Money you already have invested for retirement. It is grown at your expected return for the whole horizon, which reduces how much you still need to contribute.
Current annual living expenses
Your yearly spending in today’s money. Enter what you actually expect to spend in retirement, not your salary.
Expected annual inflation
Used to grow today’s expenses into what the same lifestyle would cost at retirement. A higher figure raises your target.
Expected annual return (CAGR)
The average yearly growth you assume on investments before retirement. It is an assumption you choose, not a forecast, and small changes move the result a lot.
FIRE multiple
How many years of future annual expenses your corpus should cover. 25× is the common starting point; the calculator accepts 20× to 40× so you can plan more or less conservatively.

How to read your result

Required FIRE corpus
Your annual expenses grown to retirement by inflation, multiplied by your FIRE multiple. This is the target.
Required monthly investment
What you would need to invest each period, from now until retirement, to close the gap between your target and what your current savings are projected to grow into. Contributions are treated as arriving at the end of each period.
Additional corpus needed
The target minus the projected future value of your existing savings. If your savings alone would already reach the target, this is zero.
Estimated investment growth
The part of the additional corpus that comes from compounding rather than from money you pay in.

The maths behind it

Future annual expenses are your current expenses grown by inflation over the years to retirement. The required corpus is those future expenses multiplied by your FIRE multiple. Your existing savings are compounded at your expected return over the same period, and the shortfall is converted into a regular contribution using the standard future-value-of-an-annuity formula, solved for the payment. Intermediate values are never rounded, so the result is not distorted by rounding at each step.

Assumptions and limitations

  • Every projection applies a single fixed return to each year. Real markets rise and fall, so a portfolio that averages the same return can still finish somewhere quite different, especially once withdrawals begin and a poor run arrives early.
  • Tax, platform fees, fund charges and transaction costs are not modelled. A real-world net outcome will be lower than a gross projection.
  • Returns and inflation are assumptions you choose, not forecasts. The output is only ever as reliable as the numbers you put in.
  • Figures are shown in the currency you select. No exchange-rate movement is modelled.
  • This is general educational information to help you understand your own numbers, not personalised financial advice.

Related calculators

Learn the concepts behind this calculator

The full Retirement Learning Centre covers withdrawals, inflation, FIRE and drawdown strategy, and how RetirePeace calculates documents every modelling convention used on this page.

More questions about assumptions, withdrawals and how these projections work are answered in the retirement planning FAQ.

The calculations provided by RetirePeace are intended for educational and planning purposes only. Investment returns, inflation, and future market conditions are uncertain. Actual outcomes may differ. This is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.