FIRE Calculator

The FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) calculator answers one question that no salary slip ever shows you: how big a portfolio do you need before paid work becomes optional, and how many years away is that point at your current pace? You enter your age, what you have already invested, your income, the annual expenses you expect in retirement, how much of your income you save, and a couple of return assumptions. The calculator then computes your FIRE number — the corpus that can fund your lifestyle indefinitely — and projects the year you reach it.

It is built for Indian savers who want a concrete target rather than a vague “save more” instinct: the 30-year-old maximising SIPs, the dual-income couple deciding whether one partner can step back, or anyone who wants to know whether financial independence is 12 years away or 30. It is a planning tool, not a guarantee — markets and inflation will not behave as smoothly as any model assumes — but it turns an abstract goal into a number you can act on.

How the FIRE number works

The core idea is the safe withdrawal rate (SWR). If you can withdraw a fixed percentage of your portfolio each year without running out, then the corpus you need is simply your annual expenses divided by that rate:

• FIRE Number = Annual Expenses ÷ Safe Withdrawal Rate. At a 4% SWR this is the famous “25× your annual expenses” rule, because 1 ÷ 0.04 = 25. Choose a more conservative 3.5% and you need about 28.6×; at 3.33% it is 30×.
• To find the years to FIRE, the calculator grows your portfolio year by year: each year it earns your expected (real, after-inflation) return and you add a year of savings, until the balance first reaches the FIRE number. Formally it solves P × (1+r)^n + S × [(1+r)^n − 1] / r = FIRE Number, where P is your current corpus, S is annual savings, r is the real return, and n is the number of years.
• Your savings rate is the single biggest lever. A higher rate cuts the years twice over: it grows the corpus faster and shrinks the target, because saving more means spending less. The “Savings Rate Impact” table above shows this directly.

A worked example in ₹

Imagine you spend ₹12,00,000 a year and plan to keep that lifestyle in retirement. Using the classic 4% rule, your FIRE number is ₹12,00,000 ÷ 0.04 = ₹3,00,00,000 (₹3 crore) — exactly 25 times your annual spending. If you are cautious about India's longer retirements and pick a 3.5% SWR instead, the target rises to about ₹3.43 crore (28.6×); at a very conservative 3% it becomes ₹4 crore (33×). Now suppose you have ₹50 lakh invested today, earn ₹30 lakh a year, and save 40% of it (₹12 lakh a year) at a 7% real return: the projection shows roughly how many years of disciplined investing stand between you and that ₹3 crore corpus. Raise your savings rate to 60% and watch the years drop sharply.

Key tips

• Base your FIRE number on your retirement expenses, which may differ from today's — the home loan may be gone, but healthcare and travel may rise.
• Indian early retirements can span 40–50 years, far longer than the 30-year window the 4% rule was tested on. Many practitioners here use 3% to 3.5% to be safe.
• Enter a real (after-inflation) return, since the whole model is in today's rupees. A nominal 11–12% equity return with 5–6% inflation is roughly a 6–7% real return.
• Revisit the calculator yearly. A rising income with controlled lifestyle inflation can pull your FIRE date in by years.

The 4% rule & India-specific notes

• The 4% rule comes from the Trinity Study (US, 1994), a 30-year historical analysis of US stock-and-bond portfolios. It is a useful anchor, not Indian law, and recent ICAI/SEBI investor surveys suggest a 3–4% SWR for Indian investors depending on equity allocation.
• This model is purely in real terms, so there is no separate inflation step — inflation is already netted out of the return you enter. Do not also deflate your expenses.
• Tax matters in India. Withdrawals from equity mutual funds attract capital-gains tax, and the SWR is usually thought of pre-tax, so you may need a slightly larger corpus to net your target spending after tax.
• The calculator covers Lean, Regular, Fat and Barista FIRE variants so you can size a frugal, standard, comfortable, or semi-retired target side by side.

This is a planning tool for general information only and is not financial advice. Consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making retirement decisions.