How to Track Your FIRE Number and Progress
How to Track Your FIRE Number and Progress
FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, and the idea is seductive: build enough wealth that work becomes optional, decades before the traditional retirement age. But "enough" is not a feeling. It is a specific number, and you can calculate it.
This guide shows you how to find your FIRE number, understand the main flavours of FIRE, and track your progress so the goal stops being a vague dream and becomes a line on a chart.
The Foundation: The 4% Rule
The whole FIRE movement rests on a single piece of research often called the Trinity Study. Researchers tested how much a retiree could withdraw from a stock-and-bond portfolio each year without running out of money over a 30-year retirement.
The headline finding: withdrawing about 4% of your portfolio in the first year, then adjusting for inflation, gave a very high probability of the money lasting. That 4% figure became the cornerstone of FIRE planning.
The 4% rule is a guideline, not a guarantee. Markets, inflation, and your own time horizon all affect it, and many planners now treat it as a starting point rather than gospel. Still, it gives you a concrete way to translate a desired income into a target portfolio.
Calculating Your FIRE Number
Flip the 4% rule around and you get the famous 25x rule. If you can safely withdraw 4% per year, then you need 25 times your annual spending invested (because 1 divided by 0.04 equals 25).
FIRE number = annual expenses x 25
So the first step is not about investing at all. It is about knowing what you spend.
| Annual Spending | FIRE Number (25x) |
|---|---|
| $30,000 | $750,000 |
| $40,000 | $1,000,000 |
| $50,000 | $1,250,000 |
| $60,000 | $1,500,000 |
| $80,000 | $2,000,000 |
Notice that FIRE is driven by spending, not income. Someone who lives on $40,000 a year needs far less than someone who needs $80,000, regardless of what they earn. Controlling your expenses lowers the finish line.
The Flavours of FIRE
Not everyone wants the same version of financial independence. A few well-known variations have emerged.
Lean FIRE
A minimalist approach. You retire on a deliberately frugal budget, often under $40,000 a year, which means a smaller FIRE number but a tighter lifestyle. It suits people who value freedom over comforts.
Fat FIRE
The opposite end. You want a generous lifestyle in retirement, so your annual spending is high and your FIRE number is correspondingly large, often $2.5 million or more. It takes longer to reach but preserves your standard of living.
Coast FIRE
The most interesting one for younger savers. Coast FIRE is the point where your existing investments, left untouched, will grow to your full FIRE number by traditional retirement age, thanks to compounding.
Once you hit Coast FIRE, you no longer need to invest another cent for retirement. You only need to earn enough to cover your current expenses. You are "coasting." It is a powerful psychological milestone because it arrives years before full FIRE and takes the pressure off.
Barista FIRE
A halfway house where you have enough invested to cover most expenses, then take a low-stress or part-time job to bridge the gap, often for the health benefits. It blends partial independence with some ongoing income.
Why Tracking Progress Is the Hard Part
Calculating your FIRE number takes ten minutes. Reaching it takes years, and that long middle stretch is where most people lose motivation. This is precisely why tracking matters so much.
Your FIRE progress is just one number divided by another:
Progress = current net worth / FIRE number
If your FIRE number is $1,000,000 and your invested net worth is $250,000, you are 25% of the way there. Watching that percentage climb, even slowly, is what keeps the discipline alive across a decade-long journey. The broader case for this habit is laid out in why tracking your net worth is the best financial habit you can build.
One important nuance: not all of your net worth counts toward FIRE. The 4% rule assumes an invested portfolio that generates returns. The equity in the home you live in does not pay your grocery bill, so many people track a separate "investable net worth" for FIRE purposes. Understanding how your assets are split is part of asset allocation 101 and why seeing your full portfolio matters.
Setting Up Your FIRE Tracking
Here is a simple framework you can run every month.
- Define your annual expenses. Be realistic about what your retired self will spend.
- Multiply by 25. That is your FIRE number.
- Tally your investable net worth. Stocks, ETFs, bonds, crypto, and other income-producing assets.
- Divide to get your percentage. Record it.
- Repeat monthly and watch the trend, plus your Coast FIRE milestone along the way.
Make the Journey Visible
A spreadsheet can do this, but FIRE is a marathon, and a flat grid of numbers does not inspire you across ten years. Seeing the curve does.
MyMoneyViz is built for exactly this kind of long-haul tracking. It is manual-first and private, so nothing syncs and you never share bank credentials. You record your balances across 13+ asset types in a quick monthly update, and it plots your net worth over time. Crucially, its goal feature lets you set a target (your FIRE number) and overlay that target trajectory against your actual progress, so you can see at a glance whether you are ahead or behind. You can even backfill past snapshots to capture the journey you have already made.
The Bottom Line
FIRE is not magic. It is a number, your annual spending times 25, and a long, patient climb toward it. Decide which flavour fits your life, calculate your target, and separate your investable assets from the rest.
Then track it relentlessly. The people who reach financial independence are rarely the highest earners. They are the ones who kept watching the line and kept it moving.
Set your FIRE goal and start tracking your progress today with MyMoneyViz.
