FIRE — financial independence calculator
When could I stop working, and what corpus does stopping actually need?
In today's money. This is what the corpus has to cover forever.
This raises the target every year, which is why the finish line moves.
3.5% is the India-adjusted convention. 4% is the American one and assumes a longer bull history than we have.
₹2,74,28,571is what covers your spending forever
- Years to go
- 16 years
- Savings rate
- 55.6%
- Lean FIRE
- ₹1,92,00,000
- Fat FIRE
- ₹4,11,42,857
Coast FIRE is ₹69.25 L — hold that much today and compounding alone reaches the target by 60 without another rupee saved. The target itself rises with inflation every year, which is why it moves away from you while you chase it. Returns are assumed, not guaranteed.
- Corpus
- Still short
| Age | Corpus | Still short | Target that year | Spending that year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36 | ₹35,21,900 | ₹2,55,52,386 | ₹2,90,74,286 | ₹10,17,600 |
| 37 | ₹52,36,816 | ₹2,55,81,927 | ₹3,08,18,743 | ₹10,78,656 |
| 38 | ₹71,69,225 | ₹2,54,98,632 | ₹3,26,67,857 | ₹11,43,375 |
| 39 | ₹93,46,713 | ₹2,52,81,230 | ₹3,46,27,943 | ₹12,11,978 |
| 40 | ₹1,18,00,360 | ₹2,49,05,269 | ₹3,67,05,629 | ₹12,84,697 |
| 41 | ₹1,45,65,192 | ₹2,43,42,751 | ₹3,89,07,943 | ₹13,61,778 |
| 42 | ₹1,76,80,673 | ₹2,35,61,756 | ₹4,12,42,429 | ₹14,43,485 |
| 43 | ₹2,11,91,275 | ₹2,25,25,696 | ₹4,37,16,971 | ₹15,30,094 |
| 44 | ₹2,51,47,110 | ₹2,11,92,890 | ₹4,63,40,000 | ₹16,21,900 |
| 45 | ₹2,96,04,643 | ₹1,95,15,757 | ₹4,91,20,400 | ₹17,19,214 |
| 46 | ₹3,46,27,503 | ₹1,74,40,126 | ₹5,20,67,629 | ₹18,22,367 |
| 47 | ₹4,02,87,387 | ₹1,49,04,299 | ₹5,51,91,686 | ₹19,31,709 |
| 48 | ₹4,66,65,087 | ₹1,18,38,084 | ₹5,85,03,171 | ₹20,47,611 |
| 49 | ₹5,38,51,638 | ₹81,61,733 | ₹6,20,13,371 | ₹21,70,468 |
| 50 | ₹6,19,49,624 | ₹37,84,547 | ₹6,57,34,171 | ₹23,00,696 |
| 51 | ₹7,10,74,637 | ₹0 | ₹6,96,78,229 | ₹24,38,738 |
| 52 | ₹8,13,56,930 | ₹0 | ₹7,38,58,914 | ₹25,85,062 |
| 53 | ₹9,29,43,276 | ₹0 | ₹7,82,90,457 | ₹27,40,166 |
| 54 | ₹10,59,99,060 | ₹0 | ₹8,29,87,886 | ₹29,04,576 |
| 55 | ₹12,07,10,644 | ₹0 | ₹8,79,67,143 | ₹30,78,850 |
| 56 | ₹13,72,88,025 | ₹0 | ₹9,32,45,171 | ₹32,63,581 |
| 57 | ₹15,59,67,833 | ₹0 | ₹9,88,39,886 | ₹34,59,396 |
"How much do I need to never work again" has two answers, and this tool gives you both: the corpus that could fund your spending indefinitely, and the year you would actually get there at your current savings rate. The gap between them is the point. The corpus is quoted in today's money, but the finish line rises with inflation every year you spend chasing it, so the number you cross at is larger than the number you set out to reach.
A worked example
Take the numbers the calculator opens with — a 35-year-old spending ₹80,000 a month, with ₹20,00,000 already invested, putting away ₹1,00,000 a month, assuming a 12% return, 6% inflation and a 3.5% safe withdrawal rate.
The FIRE number is ₹2,74,28,571 — that is ₹9,60,000 of annual spending divided by 3.5%. The savings rate is 55.6%, of the ₹1,80,000 that goes out and in each month. Lean FIRE, on 70% of that spending, is ₹1,92,00,000; Fat FIRE, on 150% of it, is ₹4,11,42,857. Coast FIRE is ₹69.25 L.
Years to go: 16 — you would be 51.
And here is the part worth staring at. At 51 the corpus is ₹7,10,74,637, not ₹2.74 crore. Sixteen years of 6% inflation have taken that year’s spending to ₹24,38,738 (about ₹2,03,228 a month), so the target for that year is ₹6,96,78,229. The year before, at 50, you are still ₹37,84,547 short of a finish line that has moved every single year. The headline is what your spending costs today; the table is what it costs when you get there.
Same household, four targets. The first three are today's money; the fourth is that same headline target after sixteen years of 6% inflation — the finish line actually crossed at 51.
What this does not account for
Tax on the way out
The corpus is pre-tax. Redeeming equity funds to live on triggers capital gains under sections 111A and 112A of the Income-tax Act — short-term and long-term at different rates, above an annual exemption — and debt funds are taxed as income. Your real withdrawal has to be gross of that.
Health cover you no longer get free
Stop working and the employer group policy stops with you. A retail policy bought at 50 restarts the waiting periods for pre-existing conditions from scratch — IRDAI caps how long an insurer may impose them, but the clock runs from the new policy, not from your years of employer cover. Buy it before you resign, and add the premium to your monthly spending.
Money you cannot reach yet
EPF and NPS Tier-1 are inside the corpus if you counted them, but they are not spendable at 45. NPS is locked to 60 and PFRDA’s exit rules force most of an early-exit corpus into an annuity. Retiring before 60 needs a taxable, liquid bridge — the projection does not check that the money is available, only that it exists.
A straight line where there are none
One return, one inflation rate, every year. Real markets deliver the same average in a jagged order, and a bad first decade of withdrawals does far more damage than the same decade later — sequence risk, which a single average return cannot show. The projection also compounds monthly and adds your instalment at month end, so it reads slightly more conservatively than the SIP calculator on the same amount.
Four things the projection cannot see.
Two more, worth saying plainly. Your spending figure is the least reliable input on the page — a 6% inflation assumption on an understated ₹80,000 compounds the error for sixteen years, and healthcare and school fees have their own inflation, well above the CPI basket average. And the 3.5% withdrawal rate is a convention, not a guarantee: no rate is safe, only more or less likely to survive forty years.
Where to go next
- SIP calculator — what the ₹1,00,000 a month actually grows into, and what happens if you step it up each year instead of holding it flat.
- SWP calculator — the other half of the question. Once you have the corpus, this is how long it lasts while you draw a monthly income out of it.
- Retirement corpus — the conventional version, retiring at 60 rather than as early as possible. Useful as a sanity check on the same spending.
How much do I need to retire early in India?
Take what you spend in a year and divide it by your safe withdrawal rate. At a 3.5% withdrawal rate that is a little over 28 times your annual spending; at 4% it is 25 times. Spending is the input that decides everything — your salary does not appear in the answer at all, only the share of it you keep.
Is the 4% rule safe in India?
The 4% figure comes from American studies of a US stock and bond history, over retirements of about thirty years. An Indian early retirement can be forty years or more, our inflation has run higher, and our equity record is shorter. That is why this calculator defaults to 3.5% rather than 4% — and why the withdrawal rate is an input you can move, not a constant. Drop it and the corpus you need rises sharply; the tool shows exactly how much.
What is Coast FIRE, and how is it different from the main number?
Coast FIRE is the amount you would need invested TODAY for compounding alone to reach your inflated target by 60, with no further saving at all. It is far smaller than the FIRE number because it buys you decades of growth. Reaching it does not mean you can stop working — it means you can stop saving, and cover only your running costs from here.
Why does the target keep going up in the table?
Because your spending does. The target is that year's expenses divided by the withdrawal rate, and expenses are grown at the inflation rate you entered. Your corpus compounds faster than the target inflates, which is why the gap closes — but it starts further away than the headline suggests.
Does my house count towards my FIRE number?
Not unless you would sell it or rent it out. The corpus is the pot you draw an income from; a home you live in produces no income, though it does lower the spending figure you have to cover, which helps on the other side of the equation. Only count what you would actually liquidate or let.
This page starts from typical figures. In Hundo the same calculator opens on your own — the loan, the deposit, the salary already on the ledger — and says where each number came from.