FIRECalc

A Retirement Plan Tested Against Market History Since 1871

FIRECalc is a free retirement calculator built by a single developer and published on its own domain. It solves one specific problem: can you retire and maintain your lifestyle with the money you have? Rather than relying on average historical returns or guessing, FIRECalc runs your planned spending and portfolio through every market condition the US has experienced since 1871, showing you how often your plan would have actually worked.

The core insight is refreshingly simple. The site explains it with an analogy: if you were building a house in Honolulu, you would not predict the exact temperature ten years from now, but you would know it has never been below 52 degrees in recorded history, so you would not need Arctic heating capacity. FIRECalc works the same way. It does not try to predict future market returns. Instead, it asks whether your plan would have survived the worst conditions the market has ever thrown at the United States, from the 1929 crash through 2026.

How You Enter and Track Your Plan

FIRECalc is entirely manual entry. There is no bank connection, no account linking, and no import from other financial apps. You supply three numbers to start: your planned annual spending, your current portfolio balance, and how many years you want the money to last. The site's data is current through January 1, 2026. You enter those figures into fields on the homepage and click submit to see your results in a new window.

The calculator then runs your plan through every single year from 1871 to the present as if you had retired that year, using historical stock and bond returns for each. This is where FIRECalc differs radically from other retirement calculators. A typical tool shows you one answer based on average returns. FIRECalc shows you the outcome under every historical scenario: if you retired in 1871, in 1872, in 1873, all the way to 2026. From these results you learn what percentage of scenarios worked. If your plan succeeds in 95 percent of historical periods, you have a high-confidence plan. If it only works in 60 percent of scenarios, you need to adjust.

The site walks through a concrete example in its Wall Street Journal citation: you retire with $400,000 in a 60-percent-stock, 40-percent-bond portfolio and plan to spend $20,000 a year for 30 years, with spending rising each year to match inflation. That strategy would have succeeded 81.5 percent of the time historically. The key phrase from FIRECalc's philosophy is "You died before your portfolio did." Success means not running out of money over your planned timeframe.

Building Your Full Retirement Plan

The calculator starts simple with spending, portfolio, and years, but it expands substantially once you start exploring the tabs. You can specify additional income sources like Social Security and pensions, entering the year each begins. You can describe off-chart spending (paying for a child's college, maintaining a vacation home, making annual charitable gifts) separately from your daily lifestyle spending. If you are not yet retired, you can model future saving years and describe how much you will contribute annually until retirement.

You can choose between several spending models during retirement. The default keeps spending constant in inflation-adjusted terms every year, preserving purchasing power. Alternatively, you can use Ty Bernicke's Reality Retirement Plan, which reduces spending by 2 to 3 percent per year starting at age 56, aligning with real-world research showing most people spend less as they age. Or you can spend a fixed percentage of your remaining portfolio each year (the site mentions the 95 Rule from Work Less, Live More). You set your portfolio's asset allocation, choosing from preset mixes or building your own from specific fund types: US stocks (total market, small, large, micro cap), US Treasuries (5-year, 30-year), corporate bonds, and commercial paper. You specify your annual investing fees as a percentage (the site notes the cheapest index funds charge around 0.18 percent). You can model one-time portfolio changes like the proceeds from selling a house or a lump-sum inheritance, with the year and amount.

An Investigate section lets you answer follow-up questions: how would changing your stock-to-bond allocation affect your success rate? What is the impact of your advisor's or fund's fee on your plan's outcome? How much more would you need to save annually if you delayed retirement five years? Given a target success rate, what spending level would work with your current portfolio, or what portfolio balance would you need for your desired spending?

No Pricing, No Account, Completely Free

FIRECalc charges nothing. There is no premium tier, no subscription, no free trial that expires. The site is presented as a public resource with no monetization model disclosed. Your data is not stored; the site explicitly states that FIRECalc does not store information you enter on this page, so each calculation is isolated and private.

One limitation is worth noting early: FIRECalc's portfolio options are fixed to the historical data available. You can build a custom mix of the asset classes the site supports, but you cannot model real estate, cryptocurrency, private equity, or other holdings outside these categories. Results are calculated on each asset proportionally if you enter dollar amounts or percentages. For anyone whose retirement hinges on returns from non-traditional assets, FIRECalc will not model your exact portfolio.

Who This Tool Is and Is Not For

FIRECalc is built for people seriously considering early retirement or FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) and anyone else who wants to know whether their savings will last. It makes most sense for people who have a reasonably clear picture of their retirement spending (or are willing to estimate conservatively), who understand basic investing concepts like asset allocation and expense ratios, and who are comfortable with the philosophy that historical data can guide but not guarantee future outcomes.

The calculator is not for people who need a budgeting tool to track monthly spending, who want bank integration to sync transactions, or who prefer a conversational advisor to walk them through planning. It is not for anyone who finds entering numbers and reading percentages daunting. Nor is it for those who want investment advice, tax planning, or personalized guidance. FIRECalc is calculation only. The site tells you how often your plan would have worked; it does not tell you what to do with that information or whether retirement is right for you. That decision is yours.

Data was last updated on April 17, 2026 with market data through January 1, 2026. The site carries no claims about future performance and makes no promises. It is a calculation tool, built on the premise that testing your plan against real market history since 1871 is more useful than guessing.