About this Calculator
Understanding your financial independence number is for the sole purpose of understanding when you can up and quit your job. Your FI (Financial Independence) Number is the amount of money you would need to have invested in order to be able to live off of your investments.
Once you reach your FI Number, this is when you can withdraw money to cover your annual expenses and leave the rest of your money to continue growing in the stock market, and repeat throughout retirement.
How does that work? According to the Trinity Study from 1998, three professors studied an attempt to determine the “safe withdrawal rate” from your investment portfolios. What they discovered was that by withdrawing 4% of your investments per year, the remaining funds would still grow in the stock market in subsequent years. As the consumer price index (CPI) increases, so would your investments to keep up with cost of living.
Something else I incorporated is lifestyle inflation. In the FI Community, you may commonly hear, “Don’t inflate your lifestyle when you get a pay raise!” Well, that would be boring. Who wants a raise but doesn’t want to live a little bit and treat themselves?
It turns out lifestyle creep is okay IF and only if you adjust your savings rate when you receive a pay raise. This calculator has this ability to calculate this.
By adjusting your savings rate with pay increases, you’ll commit to the same timeline for retirement, but get to enjoy the fruits of your hard-earned labor.
No refunds due to this being an instant download