Can I FIRE Yet? Calculator
Most FIRE calculators treat cash, invested assets, and home equity as one number. This one doesn’t. It counts only FIRE-ready assets, models your cash runway against inflation-adjusted spending, and pinpoints the year your portfolio can safely take over.
Your Timeline & Strategy
Expected Rates
Enter portfolio return in real terms. Stoke converts it into future nominal growth using your inflation assumption, and inflates future spending and cash reserve targets by that same inflation rate.
Powered by stokemoney.comStart with your spending target
Enter the annual retirement spending your portfolio needs to support. Then add your FIRE-ready assets to see your gap and estimated timeline.
Checklist
- 1Annual spending
- 2FIRE-ready assets
- 3Annual savings for timeline estimate
This panel updates automatically as you enter inputs.
What the Can I FIRE Yet? calculator works out
This calculator answers one question: given the assets you hold today and the spending you expect in retirement, is your plan already sustainable, is it sustainable after a cash-funded bridge period, or is it still short? It converts your target spending into a required portfolio at the withdrawal rate you choose, counts only the assets that can actually fund that spending, and reports the dollar gap between the two.
Two things make the answer different from a plain 25x rule of thumb. First, home and rental equity is not automatically FIRE-ready: it only funds withdrawals if you intend to sell or borrow against it, so the calculator counts it at a redeployment percentage and applies a 10% liquidation haircut. Second, a large cash position is not dead weight — it can carry your spending for several years while the invested portfolio keeps compounding. The bridge engine simulates that handoff year by year instead of comparing a single number to a single target.
The result is a plan status (Sustainable Now, Sustainable Bridge, Growth Deficit, Reserve Deficit, or Not Viable), your implied withdrawal rate on counted assets, your spend multiple, and the projected year and age you cross the 7%, 5%, 4%, and 3.5% withdrawal-rate milestones.
Who should use this calculator
It is built for people close enough to FIRE that the composition of their net worth changes the answer, not just its size.
- Anyone whose net worth is concentrated in a primary residence and who wants to see the FIRE number with and without that equity counted.
- Landlords deciding whether to keep rental cash flow or sell and redeploy the equity into an index portfolio — the calculator trades one against the other.
- Savers holding a large cash or treasury position who want to know how many years of spending it buys before the portfolio has to take over.
- People choosing between a 3.5%, 4%, and 5% withdrawal rate who want the required-portfolio and timeline difference quantified rather than argued.
- Anyone who has hit a rough 25x milestone and wants to check the answer with a minimum cash reserve and inflation-adjusted spending layered in.
How the FIRE readiness calculation works
Every figure on the page comes from the steps below. Calculations run entirely in your browser; no inputs are sent to a server or stored.
1.Net your spending against passive income
Non-rental passive income and the retained share of rental cash flow are subtracted from target spending. What remains is the portfolio-funded spend — the only spending your portfolio actually has to cover. Redeploying rental equity removes the matching share of rental cash flow, so the two move together.
portfolio_funded_spend = max(0, annual_spending - other_passive_income - rental_cash_flow x retained_share)2.Convert spending into a required portfolio
The portfolio-funded spend is capitalized at your chosen withdrawal rate, then a minimum cash reserve of N years of spending is added on top. The reserve is part of the target, which is why the number is higher than a bare 25x figure.
required_portfolio = portfolio_funded_spend / withdrawal_rate + portfolio_funded_spend x reserve_years3.Count only FIRE-ready assets
Invested portfolio and counted cash are included in full. Real-estate equity is multiplied by the share you plan to redeploy and by a 0.9 liquidation factor covering selling costs and friction. Equity you keep as-is contributes nothing to counted assets.
counted_assets = invested_portfolio + counted_cash + real_estate_equity x redeploy_share x 0.94.Measure the gap, implied rate, and spend multiple
The gap is the required portfolio minus counted assets. The implied withdrawal rate is what your current assets would actually have to yield to cover portfolio-funded spend, and the spend multiple expresses counted assets as a multiple of annual spending.
gap = required_portfolio - counted_assets implied_withdrawal_rate = portfolio_funded_spend / counted_assets spend_multiple = counted_assets / annual_spending5.Simulate the cash bridge and portfolio handoff
If invested assets alone cannot support spending at your withdrawal rate today, the bridge engine spends from cash year by year while spending inflates and the portfolio compounds at a nominal return derived from your real return and inflation assumptions. The bridge continues only while cash stays above the reserve floor; the year it does not, the engine checks whether invested plus remaining cash covers the inflated target.
nominal_return = (1 + real_return) x (1 + inflation) - 1 spend_t = spend_0 x (1 + inflation)^t bridge continues while (cash_t - spend_t) >= spend_t x reserve_years6.Project milestone crossings
The same projection is re-run at 7%, 5%, 4%, and 3.5% withdrawal rates, adding annual savings to the invested balance and crediting cash at your cash yield, to find the first year total assets clear the inflated target plus reserve. That year is reported as a calendar year and, if you supply your age, a projected age.
Input definitions
Enter annual figures in nominal dollars unless a field is explicitly a real (inflation-adjusted) rate.
- Annual retirement spending
- Total planned yearly spending in retirement, including taxes and health insurance. This is the single largest driver of the required portfolio: at a 4% withdrawal rate, every $1,000 of annual spending adds $25,000 to the target plus the reserve on top.
- Invested portfolio
- Liquid invested assets you are willing to draw on — brokerage, 401(k), IRA, HSA, and similar balances. Counted in full.
- Counted cash
- Cash, high-yield savings, money market, and short treasuries earmarked for spending. Counted in full toward assets and used as the funding source during the bridge period.
- Real-estate equity and treatment
- Your equity in property, plus how much of it you intend to redeploy: keep as-is (0%), redeploy 50%, redeploy 100%, or a custom percentage. Redeployed equity is discounted by a 10% liquidation haircut, and the matching share of rental cash flow is removed.
- Rental cash flow and other passive income
- Net annual rental cash flow and any other recurring income that continues in retirement (pension, royalties, annuity). Both reduce portfolio-funded spend rather than adding to assets.
- Withdrawal rate
- The percentage of the portfolio you plan to withdraw each year — presets at 3.5% and 4%, or a custom rate between 2% and 10%. Lower rates raise the required portfolio and push out the timeline.
- Minimum cash reserve (years)
- How many years of spending you insist on holding in cash at all times. It is added to the required portfolio and acts as the floor that ends the bridge period.
- Expected real return
- Expected annual portfolio return after inflation. Combined with the inflation assumption to derive the nominal growth rate used in the projection.
- Inflation rate and cash yield
- Inflation escalates spending and the reserve floor each projection year. Cash yield is the nominal rate credited to the cash balance while it funds the bridge.
- Annual savings and current age
- Savings still being contributed each year, added to the invested balance in the projection, and your age today, which converts projected years into a projected age. Both are optional.
Output definitions
The results panel is organized around the plan status and the gap; the remaining figures explain how the status was reached.
- Plan status
- Sustainable Now: invested assets already support spending at your withdrawal rate. Sustainable Bridge: cash carries spending until the portfolio can take over. Growth Deficit: the portfolio is still too far below target at handoff. Reserve Deficit: total assets are close enough but the cash buffer is under the reserve floor. Not Viable: the plan never reaches sustainability inside the projection window.
- Required FIRE portfolio
- Portfolio-funded spend capitalized at your withdrawal rate, plus the minimum cash reserve expressed in dollars.
- Counted FIRE-ready assets
- Invested portfolio plus counted cash plus haircut-adjusted redeployable real-estate equity. Equity you keep as-is is excluded and shown separately.
- FIRE gap
- Required portfolio minus counted assets. A gap of zero or less reads as ready; a gap inside 15% of the required portfolio reads as close.
- Implied withdrawal rate and spend multiple
- The withdrawal rate your current counted assets would actually have to sustain, and counted assets divided by annual spending. Useful for sanity-checking a plan against the 25x and 28.6x conventions.
- Bridge duration and handoff year
- How many years cash can fund spending while staying above the reserve floor, and the year the portfolio must take over — with the inflated spending figure and required assets at that point.
- Withdrawal milestones
- Required portfolio, funded percentage, and projected crossing year and age at 7%, 5%, 4%, and 3.5% withdrawal rates, so you can see what a more conservative target costs in years.
- Swing factors
- How much the gap moves if you redeploy 50% or 100% of real-estate equity instead of your current selection — the trade between liquid assets and retained rental income, in dollars.
Worked example: $2.15M in assets against $90k of spending
These are the values behind the "Load example scenario" button, so you can reproduce every number in the tool.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual retirement spending | $90,000 |
| Invested portfolio | $1,800,000 |
| Counted cash | $350,000 |
| Real-estate equity | $0 |
| Withdrawal rate | 4.0% |
| Minimum cash reserve | 2.0 years |
| Expected real return / inflation / cash yield | 5% / 3% / 2% |
| Current age | 38 |
- No passive income is entered, so portfolio-funded spend is the full $90,000.
- Capitalising at 4% gives $90,000 / 0.04 = $2,250,000, and the two-year reserve adds $90,000 x 2 = $180,000. The required FIRE portfolio is $2,430,000.
- Counted assets are $1,800,000 invested plus $350,000 cash = $2,150,000, leaving a gap of $280,000 — about 11.5% of the target, which reads as close rather than ready.
- The implied withdrawal rate is $90,000 / $2,150,000 = 4.19%, and the spend multiple is 23.9x, both just short of the 4% / 25x line.
- The bridge engine finds invested assets of $1.8M below the $2.25M needed to support spending outright, so cash funds year one. After spending $90,000, cash sits above the $180,000 floor, so the bridge holds for one year.
- By the handoff year, spending has inflated to $92,700, which requires $2,502,900 of assets. The projection reaches $2,211,900 — so the status is Growth Deficit, not a sustainable bridge.
- At a 5% withdrawal rate the same assets already clear the $1,980,000 target today; at 4% the projection crosses in about 4 years, and at 3.5% in about 7 years.
The instructive part is that the same balance sheet is FIRE-ready at 5%, four years away at 4%, and seven years away at 3.5% — and that a $350,000 cash pile only buys one bridge year once a two-year reserve floor is enforced. Raising the reserve or lowering the withdrawal rate does not just change a label; it moves the target by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Assumptions and limitations
This is a deterministic planning model, not a guarantee or a recommendation. The following simplifications matter when you read the output.
- Returns are applied as a single smoothed annual rate. There is no market volatility, no sequence-of-returns risk, and no Monte Carlo distribution — a real early retirement that starts in a drawdown will look worse than this projection.
- Taxes are not modeled. Include your expected tax bill inside annual retirement spending, and remember that a dollar in a traditional 401(k) is not a dollar in a brokerage account.
- Spending is assumed to grow with the single inflation rate you enter and never to change in real terms — no lumpy costs, no retirement spending smile, no long-term care shock.
- The 10% liquidation haircut on redeployed real estate is a flat placeholder for transaction costs and does not model capital-gains tax, depreciation recapture, or a rental sale that takes a year to close.
- Withdrawal rates are applied as fixed percentages of the target. Guardrail and dynamic-spending strategies, which real retirees use to survive bad markets, are outside the model.
- Social Security, Medicare, and ACA subsidy effects are not included; enter Social Security as other passive income if you want it counted.
- The projection window is capped at 100 years, and results are illustrative estimates rather than personalised financial, tax, or investment advice.
Related FIRE concepts used here
- Safe withdrawal rate
- The share of a portfolio that historically could be withdrawn annually without depleting it over a long retirement. The 4% figure comes from the Trinity study on 30-year US retirements; longer horizons push planners toward 3.5% or lower.
- 25x rule and spend multiple
- The inverse of the withdrawal rate: 4% implies 25x annual spending, 3.5% implies 28.6x, and 5% implies 20x. The spend multiple in this tool is the same idea measured against assets you actually hold.
- Dead equity
- Wealth locked in an asset that produces no spendable income — most often equity in a primary residence. It counts toward net worth but funds no withdrawals unless it is sold, borrowed against, or converted into cash flow.
- Cash bridge
- A deliberate cash or short-bond position that funds early retirement spending so the invested portfolio can keep compounding, and so withdrawals do not have to be taken from a falling market.
- Coast FI
- The point where existing invested assets will grow into a full FIRE number by your target date without further contributions. It is a different calculation from the one on this page — the 5% checkpoint here is a progress marker, not the coast point — so the Coast FIRE Calculator works it out directly.
Frequently asked questions
Should I include my house in a FIRE calculation?
Only to the extent you plan to convert it into spendable assets. If you intend to live there indefinitely, keep the treatment at "keep as-is" so equity is excluded, and make sure your spending figure includes property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. If downsizing is part of the plan, model that share as redeployed equity and accept the 10% liquidation haircut.
Why is the required portfolio higher than 25x my spending?
Because the minimum cash reserve is added on top of the capitalized spending. At 4% with a two-year reserve, the target is 25x plus 2x, or 27x annual spending. Set the reserve to zero if you want the bare 25x number.
Why does the calculator say "not yet" when my total net worth exceeds the target?
The verdict comes from the bridge simulation rather than a static comparison. Assets can exceed the target on paper while the invested share is too small to support spending at your withdrawal rate, or while cash sits below the reserve floor — reported as Growth Deficit and Reserve Deficit respectively.
What withdrawal rate should I use?
There is no single right answer, which is why the tool reports four. A 4% rate is the common baseline for a roughly 30-year retirement; 3.5% is the usual choice for retirements of 40 years or more; 5% assumes flexibility to cut spending or earn again. Compare the crossing years the milestones report before committing.
Does the calculator account for taxes?
No. Model taxes by including your expected retirement tax bill in annual spending. If your plan involves Roth conversions or capital-gain harvesting during early retirement, the Roth Conversion and Capital Gains Headroom Planner handles those thresholds directly.
Is my data stored?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, requires no account, and your figures are not sent to or saved on a server.
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