FIRE Number by Age
Here's the thing most "net worth by age" charts get wrong: your FIRE number doesn't change with age. It's set by your spending, full stop. What changes with age is how much you should already have invested to stay on pace. A 30-year-old and a 45-year-old chasing the same $1.25M have very different "on track" balances today, because the younger one has more years of compounding ahead.
First, the number itself
Your FIRE number is your annual spending times 25 (the 4% rule). Spend $50,000 a year and you need $1,250,000 invested, whether you're 28 or 52. Age doesn't touch it. What age decides is the pace you need to hit it by the date you have in mind. So "FIRE number by age" is really two questions: how much should I have now, and am I moving fast enough?
The savings glide path
This is the most useful benchmark, because it answers "am I behind?" directly. Take someone who invests $25,000 a year starting at 25, earning 7% real. Here's roughly where their portfolio sits at each age if they never miss a year.
| Age | Years invested | Portfolio (on track) |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | 0 | $0 |
| 30 | 5 | $144,000 |
| 35 | 10 | $345,000 |
| 40 | 15 | $628,000 |
| 45 | 20 | $1,025,000 |
| 50 | 25 | $1,581,000 |
On this path you cross a $1,000,000 FIRE number around age 45 and a $1,250,000 number around 47. The shape is the real lesson. Between 25 and 35 the balance crawls, because contributions are doing nearly all the work. After 40 it accelerates hard, because the market is now adding more each year than you are. If you feel behind in your early 30s, that's normal. The curve is supposed to be slow at the start.
Your own glide path scales with your savings rate, not your age. Save $50,000 a year instead of $25,000 and every number above roughly doubles, and you hit FIRE close to a decade sooner. Age sets how much runway you've got left, but how fast you burn through it comes down to your savings rate.
The Coast FIRE checkpoint
There's a second milestone worth knowing at each age: the point where you can stop saving entirely and still retire at 65. That's your Coast FIRE number, and unlike the full target it gets bigger as you age, because there's less time left for compounding to finish the job. For a $1,250,000 goal at 7% real, here's what "I can coast from here" looks like by age.
| Age | Years to 65 | Coast number for $1.25M |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | 40 | $83,000 |
| 30 | 35 | $117,000 |
| 35 | 30 | $164,000 |
| 40 | 25 | $230,000 |
| 45 | 20 | $323,000 |
| 50 | 15 | $453,000 |
Hit the Coast number on the left and you're allowed to take your foot off the gas, at least for a traditional retirement age. Cross-check it against the glide path and you'll see most consistent savers blow past their Coast number well before they reach full FIRE. That gap is your flexibility: the room to downshift, take a sabbatical, or switch to lower-stress work.
What to do if you're behind
Being under the benchmark for your age isn't a verdict. You have three levers, and the first two are far stronger than people expect.
- Raise the savings rate. It's the only input you fully control, and it works twice: more goes in, and your spending (and therefore your target) goes down.
- Push the date. Retiring at 50 instead of 45 gives compounding five more years, which on a large balance is enormous.
- Lower the spend. Every $1,000 a year you cut from retirement spending drops your FIRE number by $25,000.
The market return is the one lever you don't control, so build your plan on the two you do.
See where you actually stand
Enter your age, spending and current investments. The calculator shows your FIRE number, your Coast number, and the exact year work becomes optional at your current pace.
Open the FIRE Calculator →Behind, or just early in the curve?
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