FIRE Calculator

Dave Ramsey and most US financial advisors assume you retire where you currently live. That's reasonable if you're rooted — kids, grandkids, career obligations. It's not reasonable if you're 35 and open-minded, or 60 and empty-nesting, or 45 and remote.

The math: your FIRE number is a function of where you live, not a fixed attribute of you. Same portfolio, same lifestyle goals, 4× different FIRE numbers depending on the city:

Two retirees with identical $1M portfolios and identical $40K/year withdrawals. Same 30-year average market return. Wildly different outcomes.

Retiree A starts in 1966 — right before a decade of stagnant real returns and double-digit inflation. Bad years hit while their portfolio is still near full size, forcing them to sell shares at depressed prices just to cover spending. By 1982 their portfolio is 40% of starting value in real terms. The average return across the full 30 years was 6% — but sequence ruined them. They run out of money in year 28.

Retiree B starts in 1982 — right before the greatest bull run in modern history. The first decade doubles the portfolio even after withdrawals. Bad years in the 2000s hit a portfolio already 3× its starting size, so the drawdown is absorbed. They end 30 years with $4.2M. Same average return, same spending, completely different outcome.

This is why early retirees should use 3.3% instead of 4%, why holding 2–3 years of spending in cash matters, why Guyton-Klinger guardrails (cutting spending 10% in bad years, raising in good) are worth the discipline, and why variable-percentage-withdrawal schemes exist. The 4% rule is a median — not a guarantee. Your retirement is one draw from the distribution.

Two serious researchers — Wade Pfau (American College) and Michael Kitces (Nerd's Eye View) — have argued at length that 4% is too optimistic for 2020s retirees for three reasons: higher starting valuations (CAPE around 30 vs historical average of 17), lower bond yields than Bengen's data, and longer early-retirement horizons.

Pfau's valuation-adjusted framework suggests a starting withdrawal rate of ~3.25% at today's CAPE. That's effectively a 30× multiplier instead of 25×. On $40K spending, that's $1.2M instead of $1M. The extra 20% is insurance against the scenario where you retire into another 1966-1982-style decade.

Dynamic withdrawal strategies — Guyton-Klinger guardrails, variable percentage withdrawal (VPW), CAPE-based withdrawal — let you start at 4–5% with rules for cutting when the portfolio underperforms. They're more cognitively demanding and require ongoing discipline, but they support higher starting rates without the sequence-of-returns tail risk.

Our honest recommendation: if you have a 40+ year horizon and want simplicity, use 3.3% (30×). If you have a 30-year horizon and are OK with dynamic rules, use 4% with Guyton-Klinger. If you have a 40+ year horizon and want dynamic rules, start at 4% but be genuinely willing to cut in bad years.

Dave Ramsey's investment calculator uses 10–12% nominal returns, no inflation adjustment, and no cost-of-living or tax overlay. It's designed to motivate new investors, not plan real retirements. Boldin is a paid product that does deep US-domestic scenario modeling — Social Security, Medicare, Roth conversions — better than we do. FICalc is the best free Monte Carlo simulator for US portfolios.

What none of them cover: FIRE math adjusted for where you actually live. If you're US-resident and staying US-resident, Boldin is probably worth the $70/year. If you're weighing “what if I just moved abroad” — or you're a Brazilian or Spanish speaker running numbers in USD and feeling the FX mismatch — this calculator is what you need. It's the only one built around the premise that place is a lever, and it's backed by 260+ cities of real cost-of-living data and 86 countries of grounded tax information.