Learn
Two short courses and a few articles. Every example is worked out by the calculator, in your currency.
From zero to a FIRE plan
Six short lessons, in order. By the end you will have a FIRE number, a date, and the reasoning behind both.
Lesson 1 of 6, 4 minutes
Your FIRE number
The amount that lets your investments pay for your life, and what goes into it.
Lesson 2 of 6, 4 minutes
Inflation
Why the same amount buys less every year, and how to read any future number.
Lesson 3 of 6, 4 minutes
Compounding and the cost of waiting
Two people invest the same amount. One starts ten years earlier.
Lesson 4 of 6, 4 minutes
What moves your FIRE date
Which inputs bring the date forward, and which of them you control.
Lesson 5 of 6, 4 minutes
The emergency reserve
Money that keeps a bad month from changing your plan.
Lesson 6 of 6, 5 minutes
Living off the corpus
What happens after you retire, and how long the money lasts.
Make the plan realistic
Four lessons on what the simple plan leaves out: markets that rise and fall, costs, tax, and the rest of life.
Lesson 1 of 4, 5 minutes
Why the average path is not enough
Two retirements with the same average return can end far apart.
Lesson 2 of 4, 4 minutes
What fees cost over a lifetime
A yearly cost of 1% sounds small. It is charged on everything you own, every year.
Lesson 3 of 4, 4 minutes
Tax: to spend 100 you take out more
Tax sits between your corpus and your spending, and it raises the FIRE number.
Lesson 4 of 4, 5 minutes
Big expenses and other income
A wedding, a home, a pension, rent. What each one does to the date and the number.
Articles
Single topics, in any order. Each one ends with steps you can take this week.
Article, 5 minutes
The 4% rule and what it was measured on
Two studies from the 1990s, what they tested, and where they stop applying.
Article, 3 minutes
The rule of 72
How long money takes to double, worked out in your head.
Article, 4 minutes
Step-up investing
Give your monthly investment the same yearly raise as everything else.