FIRE calculator
Financial independence is the point where your invested assets can cover your annual spending without you working. The target is usually your yearly expenses divided by a safe withdrawal rate — at 4%, twenty-five times your spending. This calculator takes what you have, what you add each month, and what you expect the mix to return, and answers how many years are left.
Move any assumption and the date moves with it. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere: it is computed in your browser and forgotten when you close the tab.
Your annual spending divided by the withdrawal rate — not a fixed multiple of 25.
A projection is arithmetic on assumptions you choose. It is not a forecast, and it is not advice.
The arithmetic, in one paragraph
Your target is annual spending divided by your withdrawal rate. Your progress is your invested assets growing at your expected real return, plus your contributions, compounding until they reach that target. Everything else — the sliders, the fan chart, the tax field — is refinement on those two sentences.
Why real returns, not nominal
A 7% return with 2% inflation is not 7%. It is roughly 5% in the money you will actually spend, and using the nominal figure is the single most common way a projection flatters itself into being years early. The calculator subtracts inflation for you and prints the real rate it used, so you can see the number doing the work.
The withdrawal rate is an assumption, not a law
The 4% rule came from a study of a particular market history over thirty-year periods. It is a reasonable starting point and it is not a guarantee — a longer retirement, a worse first decade or a different asset mix all move it. Try 3.5% and 4.5% and see how much of your date depends on a number nobody can pin down. If the answer is 'a lot', that is worth knowing now.
What this does not know
It does not know what markets will do, what your spending will be in fifteen years, whether you will have children, or what a government will decide about tax. It is arithmetic on assumptions you chose. Its value is not the date it prints — it is what happens to that date when you change one number.
Questions
What is the 4% rule?
A rule of thumb that you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio in the first year of retirement, adjust it for inflation each year afterwards, and have a high chance of the money lasting thirty years. It implies a target of twenty-five times your annual spending.
Should I include my house in the target?
Usually not. A home you live in does not produce income to withdraw from. Include it in net worth, exclude it from the pot the withdrawal rate applies to, unless you genuinely intend to sell and rent.
What return should I assume?
Whatever your actual allocation justifies, not the best decade in history. A globally diversified equity portfolio has historically returned somewhere near 7% nominal over long periods; a mix with bonds returns less and moves around less. Vault derives the figure from your target allocation rather than asking you to guess.