FIRE, Coast FIRE and Barista FIRE
Estimates only. The sums use a constant return that you choose; in real life there are good years and bad years. Nothing here is advice.
Today
Monthly investing
When you stop
Barista FIRE
Assumptions
More options
All your numbers in one text. Copy it or save it; to come back to them, paste it here and press Apply.
One line per field: name: value, for example age: 30 or return: 6%. Names can be in any of the site's languages. Whatever is not in the text stays as it is.
After phases:, one line per phase: duration, amount per month and, if you like, a name after #. 5y 2’000 # Starting out = 5 years at 2’000 a month; 18m 500 = 18 months at 500 (no unit = months). After the last phase you stop investing.
Lines starting with // are notes and don't count.
This is not advice
This is an educational calculation tool, not financial or tax advice. The results are estimates: the return, inflation and withdrawal rate are your own assumptions, and the future will be different. Markets go up and down, and the order of good and bad years matters a lot. Investing has costs and is subject to tax. Before you decide, talk to a licensed adviser.
At what age do you reach each of the three milestones of financial independence: Coast FIRE, Barista FIRE and FIRE. Everything in today's money.
How to use it
- In the panel, enter your age and what you already have invested. Under Monthly investing, add one phase for each stage of life: how long it lasts and how much you invest each month.
- Say how much you will spend per month once you stop and the official retirement age. For Barista FIRE, how much you would earn working part-time.
- The Assumptions matter a lot: return, inflation and withdrawal rate. They are your choices; change them and see what happens to the milestones.
- The “i” next to each field explains it. Example fills in example numbers and Clear sets everything to zero. Text shows all your numbers as text: save it and paste it back later to return to them.
Words worth knowing
- FIRE (short for Financial Independence, Retire Early): having invested enough for your investments to pay all your spending. Working becomes optional.
- Coast FIRE: you already have enough that, without investing anything more, you reach FIRE at retirement age. You keep working, but only to pay the month's spending.
- Barista FIRE: your investments pay part of your spending and a part-time job pays the rest. The name comes from people who swap their job for lighter work, like serving coffee.
- The 4% rule: taking out 4% a year of what you have invested. With it, you need 25 times a year's spending. It comes from a study by William Bengen (1994) using US market history, for 30-year retirements. In 2025, Bengen himself raised that figure to 4.7%; for retirements of 40 to 60 years, some studies point to 3 to 3.5%.
- Real return: the return minus inflation. 6% with 1.5% inflation gives about 4.4% real.
- Today's money: amounts with today's purchasing power. 4'000 a month in 20 years means what 4'000 buys today.
- Pension: what the state or the pension fund pays you from retirement age. In Switzerland, the 1st pillar (AHV/AVS) and the 2nd pillar (BVG/LPP).
How it is worked out
The simulation. Month by month, up to age 100: the portfolio earns the real return and receives, at the end of each month, the amount of the phase you are in. After the last phase you stop investing. All amounts stay in today's money, and what you invest each month keeps its purchasing power.
The three targets. FIRE: the spending up to official retirement age and, after it, what the pension does not cover, counted at the withdrawal rate (with no pension, at 4%, that is 25 times a year's spending). Barista FIRE: the same, but up to retirement age only the part that part-time work does not pay. Coast FIRE: the amount that, with no further investing, grows at the real return until it reaches, at retirement, what the pension leaves uncovered. The milestone arrives in the first month the portfolio passes the target for that age.
What is left out. Taxes and costs (enter the return already net of them), several bad years in a row at the start of retirement, spending that changes with age and pay rises above inflation. They are estimates to think with, not a plan.