Find your Coast FIRE number — the amount you need invested today to reach financial independence, with compound growth doing the rest. Popular with the FIRE movement and early retire USA community.
Stop contributing — let compounding do the rest
Coast FIRE is the point where your invested savings — left completely untouched — will compound to your full financial independence number by traditional retirement age without any additional contributions. It's one of the most popular milestones in the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement in the USA because it removes the pressure of aggressive saving once you hit the target. The coast number is calculated by discounting your full FIRE number back to today using your expected annual return rate. On $60,000/year spending with a 4% safe withdrawal rate, the full FIRE number is $1.5 million. A 35-year-old needs roughly $290,000 invested today at 7% to coast to that $1.5M by age 65 — without adding another dollar.
Many Americans pursuing financial independence use Coast FIRE as a bridge. Once they hit their coast number, they downshift from a high-stress, high-earning job to something more sustainable — a concept sometimes called "BaristaFIRE" or "LeanFIRE." They still work and cover living expenses, but the retirement savings pressure is completely off. This makes Coast FIRE particularly appealing for people in their 30s and 40s who want work-life balance but can't yet fully retire. Running the numbers with this calculator shows exactly how close you are to that freedom point — and how many more years of aggressive saving are actually needed before you can coast.
Coast FIRE = Full FIRE Number ÷ (1 + Return)^Years. Example: $1,500,000 FIRE number, 7% return, 35 years to retirement: Coast FIRE = $1,500,000 ÷ (1.07)^35 = approximately $140,000 needed today.
After reaching your coast number, you stop contributing to retirement accounts. You still need to cover current living expenses — many people take lower-paying, more enjoyable work while their portfolio coasts to full financial independence.
A 25-year-old needs far less to coast than a 45-year-old with only 20 years. Starting early dramatically reduces the coast number — at 25 you need roughly 1/4 what you'd need at 45 to reach the same retirement balance at 65.
Regular FIRE: save aggressively until portfolio reaches 25× annual spending. Coast FIRE: save until portfolio will reach 25× spending on its own by retirement age — then reduce contributions and enjoy more balance now.
Coast FIRE is the point at which your existing invested balance, left completely alone, will compound to your retirement target by the time you need it. Reaching it does not mean you can stop working — you still need income for current expenses — but it does mean you can stop saving for retirement, which is a meaningful form of freedom well short of full financial independence. The calculation is a future-value projection with no further contributions, and it is acutely sensitive to the assumed real return: the difference between 5% and 7% real compounds into a very large gap across thirty years.
Future value of current savings = P × (1 + r)^nCoast FIRE number = Target ÷ (1 + r)^nYou have coasted when P ≥ Target ÷ (1 + r)^nwhere:
Assumptions: Uses real returns so the target is in today's dollars. Assumes the balance is never touched and stays invested through every downturn — the assumption most likely to fail in practice.
Someone aged 30 with $200,000 wants to know whether they have already coasted to a $1,625,000 target.
ResultNot yet — $294,600 is the coast number, $94,600 short
Waiting five years makes it easier in one sense and harder in another: at 35 the growth factor falls to 1.05^30 = 4.3219, raising the coast number to $375,987. Every year of delay increases the balance required, which is the whole argument for investing early.