Financial independence comes down to a single question: when you stop working, will what you've built throw off enough to live on? Set your balances, contributions and return assumptions, watch the next 29 years unfold, then test them against the spending, taxes, healthcare and inflation waiting on the other side.
Retirement accounts, brokerage, cash you are saving — one number. It grows at 10%, 7% and 5% for the three scenarios, and is treated as a typical blend for tax: 50% pre-tax 401(k) or IRA, 15% Roth, 35% taxable.
Mortgage, loans, anything still outstanding on the day you retire. It comes straight off your net worth.
One return and one inflation rate produce a single projection. Comprehensive mode splits this into ideal, average and below-average cases.
Everything above is in nominal future dollars, before tax, and ignores what your life will actually cost. These sections close that gap.
In today's dollars, excluding healthcare. Enter what you actually want to spend — money in your pocket, after the IRS is paid. The calculator grosses this up on its own, so do not add tax on top yourself.
Every field is bounded to a realistic range and clamps if you go past it. The sections below stay at zero until you enter your target spending and healthcare costs.
These figures draw on your whole portfolio. The verdict at the bottom draws on a smaller base, because it sets the healthcare bridge fund aside first, so its net figure is lower. How the tax split works. Pre-tax 401(k) and IRA withdrawals are taxed at your ordinary effective rate, Roth withdrawals are tax-free, and non-retirement withdrawals are taxed at the capital gains rate on the gain portion only. Federal rates only — no state income tax is applied.
The two capital figures measure different things. Total bridge cost is all the healthcare cash you spend between retiring and Medicare. Bridge fund to set aside is smaller because your portfolio already funds the Medicare-era cost permanently at your withdrawal rate — the sidecar only has to cover the excess above it. That sidecar is spent down year by year and hits exactly zero the year Medicare begins.
What this section is for. The verdict above already says whether the plan works, counting the retirement accounts that unlock at 59. This section answers the question underneath it: whether enough of your money sits outside those accounts to carry you to 59 at all. You can be on track overall and still fail here, purely on where the money is held. Every year between retiring and 59 is funded entirely from accessible accounts — taxable brokerage, cash, crypto, rental equity, business value — spending principal, not just returns. The withdrawal comes out at the start of each year and the remainder grows at your accessible rate. Meanwhile the 401(k) and IRA sit untouched and compound at their own rate, so the balance waiting at 59 is larger than the one shown at retirement. The minimum accessible figure is what it takes to reach 59 with exactly nothing left; anything above it is your margin.
Reading the bridge outcome. WORKS means your accessible accounts carry you all the way to 59 on their own and the portfolio waiting there supports your spending at your withdrawal rate. TIGHT means the money lasts but the draw needed from 59 exceeds your safe withdrawal rate. POSSIBLE means your accessible money runs out before 59, but early retirement is still achievable by reaching into the retirement accounts through one of the penalty-free routes below and taking principal out early — and what remains at 59 still covers the permanent floor. RUNS DRY means even that is not enough.
Two phases, two rates. During the bridge you draw your lifestyle floor plus the extra healthcare cost, so the rate sits above your safe withdrawal rate. Once Medicare starts the sidecar is spent and the rate settles back to it. Figures are retirement-year dollars and rise with inflation from there.
How healthcare is handled. Simple mode assumes $15,000 per person a year before Medicare and $5,000 per person after, both in today's dollars and both growing at 2% a year — roughly the long-run pace of medical costs. Medicare starts at 65, so if you retire before then those years cost more, and checking married filing jointly doubles both figures. Your portfolio funds the Medicare-era cost permanently at your withdrawal rate; only the extra above it during the pre-Medicare years gets its own separate pot, which is spent down to exactly zero the year Medicare begins. Comprehensive mode lets you replace all of these with your own numbers.
These figures are for the first year of retirement only. The surplus or shortfall above compares year-one income against year-one spending. It does not walk the balance forward through the retirement years, and it does not test what inflation does to your spending over that period. The safe withdrawal rate carries its own assumption that withdrawals rise with inflation and the portfolio keeps up; whether that holds depends on returns this model does not simulate. Use the burn calculator below to watch the balance actually move.
Rather than living off the yield forever, this spends the portfolio down across your retirement years and shows where the balance actually lands. Each projection starts from its own withdrawable assets above.
How this is calculated. Three separate rates drive it. Your money earns the interest rate each year, your spending rises with inflation each year, and you take out the withdrawal rate. Spending comes out at the start of the year and whatever is left grows. The rate that lands exactly on your target is solved from the same timing, so following it puts the balance on your figure to the dollar. Note this is a different question from the verdict above: there the withdrawal is assumed to last forever, here it has to last a fixed number of years and finish on a number you choose.
How the two gaps reconcile. The annual figure is net after-tax income minus required spending. The total figure is investable assets minus the tax-adjusted FIRE number — and the two are the same statement: dividing the annual gap by your withdrawal rate and by your after-tax retention rate gives exactly the total. The tax-adjusted target is higher than the headline FIRE number because every dollar you withdraw is taxed before you can spend it, so you need more capital than the plain 25× rule suggests.
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