Coast FIRE Calculator
Find out how much you need invested today so your portfolio can grow to fund your retirement — without any additional contributions. Works for both 🇺🇸 USA and 🇨🇦 Canada.
What Is Coast FIRE?
Coast FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is a financial milestone where you’ve invested enough money that — even without adding a single dollar more — your portfolio will grow on its own to fully fund your retirement by your target age. The math relies entirely on compound interest doing the heavy lifting over time.
Once you hit your Coast FIRE number, you can shift gears: take a lower-stress job, go part-time, start a business, or simply stop stressing about retirement savings. You still need to cover your day-to-day expenses, but the retirement side of your finances is essentially handled.
Traditional FIRE
Requires saving aggressively until you have enough to retire completely — often 25× your annual expenses. High savings pressure for many years.
Coast FIRE
Front-load your investing early, then let compound growth do the rest. You reach financial security much sooner — even if you still work to cover living costs.
Retirement Accounts: USA vs. Canada
The underlying math of Coast FIRE is identical in both countries, but the account types and government benefits differ significantly. Here’s what to count as “invested assets” in each country.
🇺🇸 United States
- 401(k) and 403(b)
- Traditional IRA
- Roth IRA
- Taxable brokerage accounts
- Government benefit: Social Security
🇨🇦 Canada
- RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan)
- TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account)
- FHSA (First Home Savings Account)
- Non-registered investment accounts
- Government benefits: CPP + OAS
Note: Enter the total combined value of your investment accounts in the calculator above. Government benefits (CPP/OAS or Social Security) can be entered separately to reduce your required retirement number.
How the Calculator Works
The calculation has two steps. First, your Retirement Number — how much you need at retirement — is calculated using the 4% safe withdrawal rule (or whichever SWR you choose):
Then, your Coast FIRE Number — what you need invested today — is the present value of that retirement number, discounted back by your real rate of return (investment return minus inflation) over the years until retirement:
All figures are expressed in today’s dollars — inflation is already factored in by subtracting it from the investment return rate. If your current portfolio already exceeds your Coast FIRE Number, you’ve coasted.