How much would let you stop saving?

The amount that, left completely alone, grows into your retirement pot by itself. Everything after that is optional.

What you'll spend in a year

In today's money, once you have stopped working.

Withdrawal rate

Turns yearly spending into the pot it needs. 4% is a rule of thumb, nothing more.

Years until you need it

The longer this is, the less you need today — compounding does the rest.

years

Invested right now

More options(5)

Adding every month

Only used to work out how long until you reach the coast number.

Assumed return

Inflation

Subtracted from the return. Coast FIRE is meaningless without it.

Cautious scenario

Optimistic scenario

To reach $750,000 in 25 years with no more contributions

$226,710

Once $226,710 is invested, compounding alone carries it to $750,000 in today's money over 25 years. You have $40,000, so you are $186,710 short — about 12 years 3 months of saving $600 a month.

Coast number: $226,710
Still to go: $186,710
Real return used: 4.9%

$40,000 left alone at 7%Money you paid inHover the chart for any year

This chart adds nothing after today — it is your current pot compounding on its own. The dashed line stays flat for exactly that reason.

If returns average…

Nobody knows which of these happens

Assumption	Coast number
4% a year — cautious	$461,564
7% a year — middle	$226,710
10% a year — optimistic	$113,566

Markets do not return the same amount every year. The band shows the same plan under three different assumptions, so you can see how much the answer depends on a number nobody knows.

Why this number uses the real return

Your target is stated in today's money, so the growth has to be counted in today's money too. At 7% nominal and 2% inflation, the return that actually matters is 4.9%. Discounting at the nominal 7% instead would give a coast number of $138,187 — comfortably lower, and wrong. Plenty of coast calculators make exactly that mistake.

What "coasting" means

There is a point on the way to retirement where the job is, arithmetically, already done. Not because you have enough to stop working — you almost certainly do not — but because what you have invested will grow into enough on its own, given the years remaining, without another penny going in.

That threshold is the coast number. Below it, your contributions are load-bearing. Above it, they are optional: they bring the date forward or raise the eventual income, but the original deadline no longer depends on them.

It is a useful thing to know precisely because it is a smaller, nearer number than the retirement total. "Save 750,000" is a twenty-five-year sentence. "Save 190,000 and then the pressure comes off" is a different kind of statement about the same plan.

The mistake most coast calculators make

Your retirement target is expressed in today's money — you worked it out from what a year costs you now. So the growth that carries you there has to be measured in today's money too. Otherwise you are counting inflation as progress.

That means discounting at the real return, not the nominal one. At 7% growth and 2% inflation, the rate that matters is about 4.9%, not 7%. Over twenty-five years the difference between those two is not cosmetic: discounting at the nominal rate produces a coast number roughly 40% too low, and the whole point of the exercise is to know when you can safely ease off.

The calculator above shows both figures side by side so you can see the size of the error, and it uses the real return for the answer. The method is written up here.

What reaching it does not mean

It is not permission to stop working. Coasting means covering your costs without adding to investments, which for most people is still a full-time income.
It is not a guarantee. The number rests entirely on the assumed return holding up over decades, and the whole calculation is a single smooth curve. Real returns are not.
It moves. If your spending rises, the target rises and the coast number goes with it. It is worth re-checking occasionally rather than treating it as a line you cross once.

How it relates to the other tools

The retirement number calculator works out the pot itself and how long it takes to build with contributions. This page asks the narrower question of when those contributions stop being necessary. Same target, same engine, different unknown.

Common questions

Is Coast FIRE different from Barista FIRE?

They are usually used to mean slightly different things. Coast FIRE describes the investment threshold — enough invested that it grows into your target unaided. Barista FIRE describes a lifestyle choice that often follows it: dropping to part-time or lower-paid work that covers living costs while the pot compounds untouched. This calculator does the first one.

Why does a longer horizon lower the number so much?

Because compounding is doing all the work, and it works on time more than anything else. At a 4.9% real return, money roughly doubles every fifteen years. Someone thirty years out needs substantially less than half what someone fifteen years out needs, for the identical retirement. Try dragging the years slider — the effect is larger than most people expect.

Should I actually stop contributing once I hit it?

That is not a question arithmetic can answer, and this site will not pretend otherwise. What the number tells you is what your contributions are buying: past the coast point they buy an earlier date or a larger income rather than the original goal. Whether that trade is worth it depends on your job, your health, your family and how much you trust a projection built on one assumed rate.

Not advice. This tool applies arithmetic to assumptions you entered. It does not know your circumstances, your tax position or your goals, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Past returns do not predict future ones, and no figure here is a forecast.

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