Barista FIRE Calculator

How to use

• At the beginning, you need to enter your current age, current annual income, and annual expenses.
• You should also input your current total assets, along with the allocation of these assets across different investment types (the total should add up to 100%). Different investment types will have different rates of return.
• You may enter decimal values if you believe they provide a more accurate estimate.
• The investment return rate is an estimate of how your invested money grows annually. This calculator will provide a default value for your convenience, but you can update it for a more precise estimate. Based on the past 10 years of S&P 500 returns, this rate is typically above 7%.
• The inflation rate reflects how your cash loses value over time. This is usually around 3%, though the number can vary depending on the country.
• The Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) estimates the percentage of your assets you can withdraw each year for daily expenses. This is typically set at 4%. The lower this rate, the harder it is to achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), as it means you need a higher total amount of assets.

What is Barista FIRE

Barista FIRE (or written as BaristaFIRE) is a semi-retirement lifestyle that falls between traditional FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) and full-time work. Its core idea is to cover daily living expenses through part-time or lower-stress work, while relying on passive income from earlier savings or investments (such as dividends, rental income, etc.) to maintain a state of financial independence.

Barista FIRE formula

This calculator is built on the standard FIRE calculator, with one additional step included. This is how to calculate your FIRE number:

The formula to calculate your FIRE number using the Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) is:

The formula to calculate your end-of-year savings is:

Compound interest calculation is one of the core components of the entire calculator.

The standard compound interest formula is: