About Real Fire Calculator

Real Fire Calculator is an independent, one-person project built by Sambhav Saxena. It exists because most FIRE calculators stop at the textbook shortcut, 25x your annual expenses, and call it a plan. That shortcut is a fine starting point, but it ignores almost everything that actually happens over a real 20 to 30 year timeline: raises, inflation, a wedding or a home along the way, a more cautious portfolio once you've actually stopped earning.

This tool was built to close that gap: a calculator that compounds your contributions at your expected real return, layers in a savings step-up as your income grows, and lets you fund one-time goals from the same plan instead of a separate spreadsheet, all recalculating live as you type.

Why it's free

There's no signup, no email gate, and no paywall, and there isn't going to be one. The site runs entirely in your browser: your numbers are never sent to a server, there's nothing to buy, and there's no reason to build a login just to show you math you could otherwise do yourself with more effort. See the privacy policy for the specifics of what does and doesn't leave your device.

What it isn't

This calculator isn't financial advice, and it isn't built or reviewed by a licensed financial advisor. It's a modeling tool: it takes the assumptions you give it, a return rate, an inflation rate, a withdrawal rate, and projects them forward. Real markets don't move in a straight line, and the defaults shown (a 7% pre-retirement return, 3% inflation, a 4% safe withdrawal rate) are illustrative starting points, not predictions. Treat the output as a way to reason about trade-offs, not a guarantee, and talk to a qualified advisor for decisions that matter. See the full terms and conditions for more.

Feedback

Found a bug, a confusing assumption, or a feature this calculator is missing? Get in touch.
As a solo project, every bit of feedback directly shapes what gets built next.