Savings Rate Calculator
The single most powerful number in FIRE: what your savings rate does to your timeline.
Your numbers
Assumptions
Your savings rate
36.8%
Saving $35,000 a year, you reach financial independence in 19 years 7 months — around age 52.
- Saved each year
- $35,000
- Your FIRE number
- $1,500,000
- Real return
- 5.37%
Years to independence, by savings rate
Starting from what you already have invested. This is the chart that convinces people the savings rate matters more than the return.
- 5%46.3 yrs
- 10%39.3 yrs
- 15%34.0 yrs
- 20%29.8 yrs
- 25%26.3 yrs
- 30%23.2 yrs
- 35%20.5 yrs
- 40%18.1 yrs
- 45%15.9 yrs
- 50%13.8 yrs
- 55%11.9 yrs
- 60%10.2 yrs
- 65%8.5 yrs
- 70%6.9 yrs
- 75%5.4 yrs
- 80%4.0 yrs
Why the savings rate dominates
Every dollar you stop spending does two jobs. It becomes a dollar invested, and it permanently lowers the portfolio you need, because your target is your spending divided by your withdrawal rate. Cut $1,000 of annual spending at a 4% withdrawal rate and your FIRE number drops by $25,000 — before you have invested a cent of it.
That compounding of both sides is why the table above bends so sharply. Going from a 10% to a 20% savings rate buys you far more than a percentage point of extra return ever will, and it is entirely within your control.
Once you know roughly where you sit, the full FIRE calculator adds the parts this one deliberately leaves out: tax, employer contributions, and whether you can actually reach your money before preservation age.