Wealth & FIRE Calculator

When will you reach financial independence? Our Wealth & FIRE Calculator uses a compound-interest model to show how far your current savings rate gets you — and how much more would be needed.

What FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early — actually means

FIRE is a movement that originated in the US in the 1990s and gained traction in Europe around 2015. The core idea: save 25× your annual expenses, invest in a broad-based ETF (typically MSCI World or S&P 500), and you can live indefinitely off the long-run 4 % real return — without ever touching the principal. At €30,000 of annual expenses, that means a target portfolio of €750,000. Variations like LeanFIRE (very frugal), FatFIRE (comfortable lifestyle) and CoastFIRE (stop saving but let existing capital compound) allow individual tuning.

What assumptions does the calculator use?

By default we use 7 % gross annual return (long-term MSCI World pre-inflation), 2 % inflation, and continuous monthly contributions. Every value is editable — a more conservative scenario uses 5 % return and 3 % inflation. Important to understand: the calculator shows nominal end-of-period value and real value in today’s purchasing power. Over 30 years, 2 % inflation means €1 million in nominal terms equals about €552,000 in today’s money.

Wealth & FIRE Calculator