When can I retire and how long do I need to save before I can retire?

That’s the key question! This interactive fire calculator was built to let you play with the inputs and help you understand how savings rate and retirement spending strongly determine how long it will take you to save up for retirement. Note: it does not simulate the post-retirement period when you start to draw down your savings. That can be done on this post-retirement fire calculator (Rich, Broke or Dead) which compares the frequency of various outcomes in retirement (running out of money, ending up with way too much money, and life-expectancy).

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Updated Shiller returns and inflation dataset through beginning of 2024

Rich, Broke or Dead?

One of the key issues with retiring is ensuring that the money you have saved will not be exhausted during your retirement. This is also known as Longevity Risk and is especially important if you want to retire early, since your retirement could be 50 years long (or more). This interactive post-retirement fire calculator and visualization looks at the question of whether your retirement savings can last long enough to support your retirement spending and combines it with average US life expectancy values to get a fuller picture of the likelihood of running out of money before you die.

It helps to answer the question: If I start out with $X dollars at the beginning of my retirement, will I run out of money before I die?

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