🔥 Financial Independence
Years to FI from your savings rate and real returns.
This tool estimates how many years it will take to reach Financial Independence — the point where your investment portfolio can sustainably cover your living expenses indefinitely — based on your savings rate and expected real (inflation-adjusted) returns.
FIRE calculations center on your savings rate (the % of income you save) and your FIRE number:
FIRE Number = 25 × Annual Expenses
This is derived from a 4% safe withdrawal rate. The calculator projects how your existing savings plus ongoing contributions compound over time at your expected real return — see Retirement Planning for how that corpus is sized — and finds the year your portfolio crosses the FIRE number.
Someone earning 15,00,000/year, saving 50% of it, with expenses of 7,50,000/year, needs a FIRE number of 1,87,50,000 (25 × 7,50,000). At a 7% real return, the calculator shows this is reachable in roughly 15–17 years, depending on starting savings.
Using nominal (non-inflation-adjusted) returns overstates progress significantly over a 15–20 year horizon. Also, savings rate has a far bigger effect on your FIRE timeline than investment returns do — small increases in monthly savings compound faster than chasing higher-risk returns.
What it does
Shows how close you are to Financial Independence: your savings rate, the target corpus (25x annual expenses), and how many years to get there at a real return.
When to use it
Use it to see the one lever that matters most — your savings rate — and to watch years-to-FI fall as your rate rises.
Assumptions
- You invest your monthly savings and earn a constant real (inflation-adjusted) return.
- Expenses stay constant in real terms; the 25x rule assumes a 4% withdrawal rate.
Every extra percentage point of savings rate shrinks the years to FI more than the last one. Cutting expenses does double duty: it raises savings rate and lowers the FI target. That is why frugality is the fastest FI lever.