FIRE

FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early — is a personal-finance movement popularised through the 1990s book Your Money or Your Life and amplified online by bloggers like Mr Money Mustache. The core idea is to save 50–75% of after-tax income for a short, intense period (10–20 years), invest aggressively in low-cost index funds, and cross the threshold where portfolio income can cover annual expenses indefinitely — well before the traditional 60s.

The canonical math rests on two numbers: your annual expenses, and a safe withdrawal rate. Using the 4% rule from the Trinity Study, a portfolio equal to 25× annual expenses is considered FIRE-ready. Example: a couple in Bangalore spending ₹15 lakh/year needs a ₹3.75 crore portfolio to declare FIRE. Variants — LeanFIRE (very low spend), FatFIRE (premium lifestyle), Barista FIRE (portfolio covers base, part-time work covers variable) — let practitioners match the framework to their life.

Critics note that the 4% rule was back-tested in US markets and may not survive 40+ year retirements or high-inflation emerging-market environments; 3.3–3.5% is more defensible for early retirees. Health insurance, child education, and elderly parent care change the math significantly in India.

Run your numbers through our FIRE/retirement calculator to see the corpus, savings rate, and time-to-FI implied by your current spending and income.