Find the balance that grows into your retirement corpus on its own, with nothing added. Coast FIRE arrives years before financial independence does.
What is Coast FIRE?
It is the balance that grows into your retirement corpus on its own, with no further saving at all. Once you have it, compounding does the rest of the work. You still need an income to live on, but you no longer need to put anything aside for retirement, which is a very different kind of freedom from having stopped work altogether.
How is this different from the financial independence page?
That page answers when you can stop working. This one answers when you can stop saving, which happens a long time earlier. In the worked example financial independence is more than eighteen years away while Coast FIRE is a single number you could plausibly reach in six or seven. They are different decisions and they need different arithmetic.
Can I really stop investing once I cross it?
Arithmetically yes, if the return assumption holds and your spending does not rise beyond inflation. In practice most people keep going, because crossing the line early buys an earlier retirement rather than a safer one. The useful thing is knowing the pressure is off, so a sabbatical or a pay cut is a choice rather than a crisis.
What is Barista FIRE?
Coasting while working a job that covers your living costs but saves nothing, often part-time or lower-paid. It is the practical use of a Coast FIRE number: once the retirement corpus is on autopilot, you only need to earn what you spend. The number on this page is exactly the threshold at which that becomes possible.
Why is the number so sensitive to the return I assume?
Because it is discounted over the whole time to retirement. At 11% for 18 years the target divides by 6.5, and at 9% it divides by 4.7. That is a difference of nearly ₹39 lakh on the same target. Coast FIRE is the most return-sensitive number in personal finance, so treat the answer as a range rather than a line.
Is the 4% rule safe in India?
There is no evidence that it is. The figure comes from American data, American inflation, and a thirty year retirement. Indian inflation has run higher and retiring at 45 means funding forty or fifty years. Many Indian planners use 3% to 3.5%, and the table on this page shows what each one does to the Coast FIRE number.