Project the pot size needed to reach financial independence and how long it may take on your current contributions. Enter your savings pot, annual contribution, expected growth rate, target spending in retirement, and safe withdrawal rate.
This is a projection calculator, not financial advice. Figures are illustrative and depend entirely on your inputs.
FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early — is a framework for building a pot large enough that investment returns can cover your living costs indefinitely. The core idea is simple: if your invested pot is large enough, withdrawing a small percentage each year preserves the capital over the long run.
The approach gained prominence from the 1994 Trinity Study, which analysed historical portfolio survival rates over 30-year periods. A 4% withdrawal rate from a diversified portfolio had a high success rate historically — though past performance does not guarantee future results, and longer retirement periods (40–50 years) carry more uncertainty.
Enter your current invested pot, annual contribution, expected annual growth rate, target annual spending in retirement, and your chosen safe withdrawal rate. Click Calculate to see your FIRE number — the pot size implied by your spending and withdrawal rate — and a projection of how many years it may take your pot to reach it.
The projection uses compound growth: each year, your contribution is added and the annual growth rate is applied to the total. The calculator scans year by year and reports the first year the pot crosses your FIRE number, up to a 60-year horizon.
The default of 4% is the most commonly cited figure from the research literature. If you plan to retire very early (30s or 40s) and face a 50+ year retirement, many analysts prefer 3–3.5% to account for greater sequence-of-returns risk. If you have flexible spending and other income (State Pension, part-time work), a slightly higher rate may be appropriate.
Try a range of values in this calculator to see how sensitive your FIRE number and timeline are to the withdrawal rate you choose.
This calculator projects nominal (not inflation-adjusted) growth. Contributions are added annually at the start of each year before growth is applied. No tax, platform fees, or charges are deducted — the growth rate you enter should be your assumed after-charges rate. State Pension, defined benefit pension income, and other income sources are not included.
The projection assumes a constant growth rate throughout the horizon; real returns will vary year to year. These figures are for planning purposes only and are not financial advice.
A FIRE number is the total invested pot size at which you could, in theory, live indefinitely off investment returns without depleting the pot. It is calculated by dividing your target annual spending by your chosen safe withdrawal rate. For example, if you plan to spend £30,000 per year and use a 4% withdrawal rate, your FIRE number is £750,000. The idea comes from the Trinity Study — research that found a 4% annual withdrawal from a diversified portfolio had a high historical success rate over 30-year periods. Your FIRE number is specific to your spending and risk tolerance, not a universal figure.
The safe withdrawal rate (SWR) is the percentage of your invested pot you draw down each year. The widely cited 4% rule comes from the 1994 Trinity Study and suggests that withdrawing 4% of an initial pot annually (adjusted for inflation) historically survived most 30-year retirement periods in US data. Lower rates (3–3.5%) give more margin but require a larger pot. Higher rates (5%+) mean a smaller pot is needed but carry more sequence-of-returns risk — especially for long retirements of 40–50 years typical in early retirement scenarios. This calculator lets you adjust the rate so you can see how sensitive your FIRE number is to this assumption.
No — this calculator projects your invested pot only. It does not account for State Pension income, defined benefit pension payments, or any other income source in retirement. If you expect State Pension income (currently up to £11,502 per year for the full new State Pension in 2025/26), you may want to reduce your target annual spend by that amount before entering it, which will lower your FIRE number accordingly. See the pension calculator for State Pension projections.
No — the projection is nominal (in today's pounds without adjusting for future price rises). The growth rate you enter and the pot values shown are all in current money terms. To get a rough inflation-adjusted projection, you can subtract your expected inflation rate from the growth rate you enter — for example, enter 4% instead of 6% if you expect 2% annual inflation. Your FIRE number is also expressed in today's pounds; in practice the actual pot needed will be larger by the time you reach it.
Planning where to put your contributions? Use our ISA calculator to project tax-free growth within your annual ISA allowance. For the maths of compounding without the FIRE framing, the compound interest calculator gives a year-by-year breakdown. If you are building toward retirement specifically, the pension calculator projects your pot with employer contributions and tax relief. To see how much of your salary is available to invest, use the salary after tax calculator.
Cookies
We use essential cookies to keep the app working. With your permission, we also use analytics cookies to understand what’s working and improve the product. Privacy policy.