COAST FIRE Calculator – Start Saving for Financial Freedom!

One of the most popular twists to the FIRE movement – that is financial independence, retire early – is COAST FIRE, mainly because it grants people the freedom to live reasonably now, while still ensuring they retire early.

The COAST FIRE calculator below helps you plan out what you need to save and when. An early retirement must be planned well, and that’s where this calculator hopefully be of use to you.

Keep reading, and I’ll take you through the FIRE movement and how COAST FIRE could help you reach those retirement goals.

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Currency: USDGBPEURINRCADAUD
Current Age:
Retirement Age:
Current Portfolio Value ($):
Annual Contribution ($):
Stop Contribution Age:
Annual Return (%):
Inflation Rate (%):
Annual Withdrawal ($):
Expected Average Income Tax Rate on Withdrawals (%):

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Share Result

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Usage Guide

Here’s a quick guide to using the calculator and what each input needs.

1. Currency: Set the currency format.
2. Current Age: Your age today in years.
3. Retirement Age: The age at which you wish to begin your retirement. Starting at that age, the calculator will start withdrawing the amount that you specify in the Annual Withdrawal field (adjusted for inflation).
4. Current Portfolio Value: Specify the amount of money that you have saved up and that is readily investable in to the markets or other reasonable opportunities.
5. Annual Contribution: This is the amount of new money that you expect to be able to contribute each year (without fail) in to your portfolio. This amount is added to your portfolio each year (after inflation adjustment) until the age you specify in the Stop Contribution Age field.
6. Stop Contribution Age: This is the age at which you wish to stop contributing to your portfolio. This value can be any year between your Current Age and your Retirement Age.
7. Annual Return (%): The annualize rate of return you expect to generate from your portfolio. A comfortable range here would be between 6% to 8%.
8. Inflation Rate (%): The expected annual rate of inflation for the long term. If you live in a developed country, you can use 2% as a representative figure here.
9. Annual Withdrawal: This is the amount in today’s money that you expect to withdraw in the future. The calculator will automatically adjust for inflation using the Inflation Rate, so please enter a number in current values. If you expect to receive a pension, then you can reduce the expected annual withdrawals. See more below.
10. Expected Average Income Tax Rate on Withdrawals (%): This is an optional field. It is for the average income tax that you expect to pay in retirement on the withdrawals from your portfolio. Remember that you will only have the after-tax portion to fund your expenses.

A quick note on the ages: The idea behind any retirement calculator is for you to specify you current age and the retirement age. Our calculator includes an additional input called the Stop Contribution Age. Let’s look at this through an example:

Jon is currently 37 years old and wants to retire at the age of 55. His savings portfolio is currently worth $75,000. He would like to save up front for the next 10 years, so he can contribute $15,000 per year for the next 10 years, or until the age of 47. In this example, Jon would entire his Current Age as 37, the Stop Contribution Age as 47, and Retirement Age is 55.

Jon could alternatively use a Stop Contribution Age of 54, if he intends to keep adding to his portfolio right up till the very end. Alternatively, he could also use 37 if he just wants to contribute for 1 year.

There are many different options! Please do try out a few different options to see what fits best.

Outputs

The calculator presents the results in 4 different ways:

1. Descriptive: This section just provides a simple text based summary with the basic numbers around whether you’ll be able to achieve COAST FIRE or not, based on the inputs that you have entered.
2. Chart 1 – Portfolio Value & Annual Investment Income: The black line shows how your portfolio value (left y-axis) will behave over time. The vertical bars show the annual investment income generated by your portfolio. Note that this income will be a combination of capital gains (share prices going up) and dividends.
3. Chart 2 – Annual Cash Flows & Returns: This chart shows the cash added to the portfolio during initial years and the cash withdrawn from the portfolio in the retirement years. These are in orange. The blue bars show the annual investment income from the portfolio.
4. Table: If you select “Yes” in the dropdown box, the results will be shown in a tabular format for each year.

There’s a convenient button to Share your results too. You can save the link and come back to the calculator to reuse the inputs that you previously entered as well.

This COAST FIRE calculator is applicable across the world, so whether you are in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia, this calculator will work for you. Just remember to set your currency format properly so your results are shown in the proper format.

What is the FIRE movement?

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea of the FIRE movement is to promote extreme savings and wise investments for those following the system to retire early. 

The overall idea is to try to live off small withdrawals from your savings without worrying about running out of funds before retirement.

Essentially, it’s a way to develop responsible saving and spending habits while keeping a financial cushion in mind. For many people, it means breaking free from work to enjoy their money as and when they wish.

However, FIRE does take a lot of work – and, generally, a lot of money. It’ll mean scaling back your spending and being smart about debt. What’s more, there’s a risk you could outlive your savings. If you really want to save up via FIRE, you’ll likely need to start cutting back on daily and weekly spending. However, the idea is that you’ll be able to enjoy the money you have saved sooner than you typically might.

Let’s explore COAST FIRE, a variation on the theme that’s picked up a lot of recent interest.

What is COAST FIRE?

Coast FIRE, at its most basic, is an intensive savings model that requires you to save for retirement early, then live off your retirement money while growing it in investments.

Unlike other FIRE models, COAST FIRE does not permit individuals to save enough to retire fully earlier. Instead, you’re hitting your goals earlier to keep growing this capital while living off it.

The idea behind this all is so that you can stop saving for retirement perhaps 10 to 20 years before you’re of an age to cease working. Once you hit your desired total, you let your money saved “coast” in investments or retirement funds to grow. You’ll keep working alongside to keep income rolling in, but you can work fewer hours if you wish.

While this may sound difficult – or even counterproductive – COAST FIRE allows you to gain financial freedom and independence without spending most of your life contributing to your 401K or equivalent.

Instead, once you’re at the COAST FIRE total, you can (hypothetically) rely on your savings to cover your basic needs while still being able to work part-time or even in a lower-paying job. Therefore, you should still have plenty of extra free time outside of work, almost in the shape of a semi-retirement! 

What are the benefits of COAST FIRE?

COAST FIRE may not be achievable for everyone (and may not even be the most preferable option for FIRE fans), but there are a few reasons you may wish to try it.

You can stop working full-time, sooner.

One of COAST FIRE’s biggest benefits is that you don’t have to keep working full-time to top up your retirement fund.

For example, if you start early enough and save within your means, you could start to scale back your hours at the age of, say, 45. If you have enough to retire on at that age, you can start focusing on personal projects, and even living off your retirement money for basic expenses.

The further benefit of the COAST FIRE model here is that it will keep growing in investments, meaning there’s income coming in. Naturally, the risk is that your investments don’t work out – so you need to be a shrewd investor.

You can potentially change careers.

Many people feel restricted by careers when they focus wholesale on saving for retirement. What’s more, many of us have reached positions and built careers by following what may have been the easiest, most natural, or most obvious paths for us. And, in so doing, we may have left bigger dreams behind.

COAST FIRE strives to give you back the chance to do something you’ve always wanted to, while not having to worry about saving so far into your working life. Simply check out once you achieve COAST FIRE, and provided you have an income stream (through investment interest or otherwise), you’re covered.

Your retirement pot will grow even more once you reach 60+.

Rather than making do with whatever amount you’d typically achieve through retirement saving by the age of 60+, letting your savings grow on compound interest means you’ll have an even larger amount to fall back on when you really want to quit work for good.

The ultimate aim of COAST FIRE is to provide you with the dual dream of earlier working freedom, and larger retirement savings. That said, achieving all of this comes at a fairly large cost over time.

What are the drawbacks of COAST FIRE?

There are drawbacks to every positive, and while COAST FIRE isn’t a too-good-to-be-true option, it’s still got its caveats.

Returns are never guaranteed.

To reach your Coast FIRE total, you will need to rely heavily on wise investments and careful portfolio management. But, no matter how researched and careful your investments are, returns are never guaranteed. 

Therefore, if you’re reliant on your investments driving up your eventual retirement returns, keep in mind your end date may change if you’re not careful. Consider working closely with a portfolio manager who can help you find the absolute best diversification options for your money and lifestyle.

You’ll need a lot of money to reach COAST FIRE.

Regardless of how long it takes you, reaching COAST FIRE means condensing lifelong savings into around half the time it’d usually take. That means you’ll either need to work a little harder now and make a few sacrifice for 10-20 years, so you can really sock away those savings.

That means you’ll need to prioritize your future self and savings goals over your immediate comforts. So, consider scaling back vacations, big holiday spending, new cars, and properties. You’ll really have to attach yourself to COAST FIRE as your goal.

You may not benefit in the short term.

Keeping an eye on long-term success is one thing, but it may not actually be good value at all to invest in COAST FIRE in the here and now. 

If you’re not paying into a 401K or other standardized retirement plans, you could risk spending more on healthcare, and missing out on extra contributions into your retirement funds.

Do also think about any debts you have to settle. Student loans, for example, may prevent many Americans from reaching COAST FIRE at all on a feasible basis.

That’s why I’ve set up the calculator above – so you can see if it‘s feasible for you to start saving and eventually achieve “COAST FIRE” without suffering in the short term.

What do I need to calculate my COAST FIRE total? 

We’ve discussed the inputs for the calculator above, but here are some additional points on what you’ll ideally need to hand if you want to calculate how to get to COAST FIRE.

Your current monthly expenditure

Your monthly expenses include everything that you spend on a monthly basis. This includes your food costs, rent payments, mortgage payments, utility bills, entertainment, etc. It should also include expenses that you may not spend every month but will need to be considered, such as travel, maintenance (on your home, car, etc.), insurance, etc. 

In the calculator, use the annual expenditure (multiply monthly expenditure x 12). Don’t worry about inflation over time as the calculator automatically handles this for you.

The age you want to achieve COAST FIRE

Think carefully about when you want to achieve financial independence, including when it’s likely to be possible. The older the age at which you want to be financially independent, the more time you will have to grow your savings between then and now.

Your current investments

Do also take care to consider your current investments and total net worth. That means the sum of your financial assets (including cash, investments, real estate, etc.). It is vital admin to take into account all of your liabilities, too, such as your loans and debt.

Rates of Return

You should also consider your investments’ current expected growth rate. That said, as mentioned above, there are no guaranteed growth rates, so it is important to research your investment opportunities carefully and diversify as much as possible.

Depending on your age and risk profile, I would recommend that you opt for one of the following flavours of investment portfolios:

1. Balanced Portfolio (typically 60% equity and 40% debt): These portfolios are suitable for those who have moderate risk tolerance. Your expected annual returns over the long run would likely be in the 5-7% range. You can comfortably use 6% as a representative figure here.
2. High Equity Allocation (at least 80% equity): Some companies refer to this as a “High Risk” portfolio. I disagree with the nomenclature, as the portfolio doesn’t have higher risk. On our site we have often discussed the difference between risk and volatility. Suffice to say that if you’re young and you can absorb volatility, this is likely your best bet. You can use a return range of 6-9%.

When you do allocate your portfolio, remember to consult a professional wealth advisor. Seek advice wherever you can, so you don’t get in to unexpected troubles.

Withdrawal rate at retirement

It’s important to look at the withdrawal rate in your retirement. Ideally, shooting for a target of 4-5% is reasonable as you can expect a reasonably balanced portfolio to deliver upwards of 5% annually.

If your withdrawal rate exceeds your annual returns, your portfolio will start to decline over time. If the mismatch is severe, your portfolio could exhaust itself in your life time. This would put you in a very difficult situation.

Some people however wish to “die with zero” and leave no money behind. Some people wish to leave a lot of money behind. You have to determine what your end goal is as it’s a personal decision.

Just be sure to think it through carefully as the trajectory will be difficult to modify as you get older. Please play around with the calculator to see what works best for you!

COAST FIRE Calculator With Pension

You can use this calculator to determine whether you can achieve your COAST FIRE if you expect to receive a pension. The simplest way of doing it would be to reduce your Annual Withdrawal by the amount you expect to receive in pension. But remember you’ll have to adjust for inflation here as your pension value will be represented in future dollars whereas the Annual Withdrawal field is in current dollars.

If you find that too much to digest, open up the table by selecting “Yes” on the dropdown menu where it asks “Show the results in a table?” If you expect to receive $20,000 in retirement, you can play around with the Annual Withdrawal field such that in your retirement year, the sum of the value show in in the “Cash Flow” column + the value of your pension equals your total expected expenses.

The Shape of FIRE

We talked about several points above and I wanted to show through the example of the COAST FIRE calculator how portfolio values could shape up over the course of retirement.

NoFIRE

This is a pretty obvious case in which there simply isn’t enough money saved up to retire in a sustainable manner. The chart generated by our calculator would look like the one one shown below.

Building on Jon’s case above, with the assumptions presented below, Jon runs out of money by the time he’s 67. That’s not a good situation to be in!

1. Current Age: 37
2. Retirement Age: 55
3. Current Portfolio Value: $100,000
4. Annual Contribution: $25,000
5. Stop Contribution Age: 45
6. Annual Return: 6%
7. Inflation Rate: 2%
8. Annual Withdrawal: $60,000

Luke Warm FIRE

Jon sees the above and decides to step his game up a couple of notches. He opts for a more aggressive portfolio allocation to equities (at least 90% equities) and hopes to attain 8% over the long run. He also increases his Stop Contribution Age to 48, so contributing $25k annually for 3 additional years.

In this case, his portfolio’s life extends out to the age of 88 to 89. This is obviously a better situation than the above, but not great. A couple of bad years in the market or higher level of expenses would force him to withdraw more. With bad timing, he could still easily get in to trouble.

COAST FIRE

Jon really wants to achieve COAST FIRE, so he isn’t left in a lurch when he is old. But he doesn’t want to dramatically step up his savings rate either. He is also uncomfortable taking on a high equity allocation portfolio. So now he changes the assumptions to the following:

1. Retirement Age: Increase by 1 year to 56. 1 year of compounding can make a big difference in the latter years!
2. Annual Contribution: Increase to $26,000. This is only $1,000 a year higher, so not a dramatically higher ask.
3. Stop Contribution Age: This is where he does have to make the biggest change. This now goes up to 55.
4. Annual Return: He dials the risk a little bit and shoots for a 7.5% return.

Now his money can really go on for a long time! As this chart shows, even if he lives to be 125 years old (highly unlikely), his portfolio will still outlive him.

It might seem funny to think about being 125 years old, but this does build in an excellent buffer for the unexpected: poor market returns for an extended period of time, or higher than expected medical or other bills, or leaving money behind for a surviving spouse/partner, or of course leaving money behind for an inheritance or a charitable donation! Buffers are important and they’re important to build in slightly higher than you would expect.

Of course one can argue that this may case not really be COAST FIRE, but this is just an example. If you are able to start off at a younger age and save more, your numbers could look a lot better than those presented here! Try out the calculator and see if you can hit COAST FIRE at 40!

Other Versions

There are other types of FIREs too and it’s worth learning about them. If you’d like to retire with a bigger nest egg and earlier, try checking out FAT FIRE.

Before You Go…

Hopefully you found this information useful. Please do let me know in the comments if you have any feedback, comments, or questions!

Our whole blog is dedicated to help you get on the path of financial freedom. Feel free to browse around and read through the articles.

In a nutshell, the fastest way to achieving FIRE is to cut your debt, minimize unnecessary expenses, so you can save and invest your money! Do check out our guide to vested balances and 401Ks, should you choose to go that route!

There are plenty of investment books and podcasts that you can use as a learning resource along the way to help you reach your goal faster.

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