Barista FIRE Calculator
Find your Barista FIRE number: the amount you need invested today so you can leave full-time work, cover part of your expenses with part-time income, and still arrive at full financial independence by your target retirement age. The calculator runs both phases, the barista years where your portfolio partly supports you and the retirement that follows, and reports whether your portfolio survives the first phase.
A 35 year old spending $50,000 a year who takes a part-time job paying $30,000 leaves a $20,000 annual gap for the portfolio to cover. To close that gap for 25 years and still hold a $1,250,000 FI number at age 60, at 6% real returns, they need about $564,000 invested today. Below that, the portfolio is being drained faster than it grows.
Enter Your Parameters
Model the barista years and the retirement after themResults
Your Barista FIRE number and portfolio survivalEnter your details and click calculate to see the portfolio you need before going part-time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Understanding the Barista FIRE milestone
What is Barista FIRE?
Barista FIRE is the point where your portfolio is large enough that part-time work covers the rest. You leave the full-time job, take something lighter, and let the portfolio bridge the difference between that smaller income and your actual spending. The name comes from the idea of a job that carries health coverage without carrying a career.
It sits between Coast FIRE and full FIRE. Coast FIRE means you can stop saving but must still cover your own expenses; Barista FIRE means your portfolio starts contributing to those expenses while you keep earning something.
How is the Barista FIRE Number calculated?
Two phases. During the barista years the portfolio grows at your real return and then settles the gap between your spending and your part-time income; if that income exceeds spending the difference is invested instead. At your target retirement age the portfolio must equal your FI number, which is retirement spending divided by your withdrawal rate.
The Barista FIRE Number is the starting portfolio that lands exactly on that FI number after all the gap years are paid. It is the FI number plus the compounded cost of every gap year, discounted back to today at your real return.
Why can the portfolio run out?
Withdrawing a fixed amount from a portfolio that is still small is the fastest way to end a FIRE plan early. If your gap is large relative to what you have invested, the withdrawals outpace the growth and the balance falls every year until it reaches zero, which the projection reports as a depletion age.
Seeing a depletion age means the plan needs a smaller gap, whether through higher part-time income or lower spending, or more time invested before going part-time.
What about health insurance?
Health coverage is the input most Barista FIRE plans get wrong, because employer-subsidized coverage is worth far more than its payroll deduction suggests. If the part-time job provides coverage, enter your take-home pay and leave spending as it is. If it does not, add the full premium you would pay yourself to your barista-years spending.
The distinction matters more than the return assumption: a premium difference of a few hundred dollars a month changes the annual gap directly, and the gap is what the portfolio has to survive.
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All calculations run entirely in your browser. We never collect, store, or transmit any data you enter into this calculator. There are no APIs, no server requests, and no logs - your financial information stays on your device and disappears when you close the page.
For informational and educational purposes only — not investment advice.