Barista FIRE: let part-time work cover part of the bill.
Barista FIRE is the point where a smaller job covers some of your annual spending — so the portfolio only has to fund whatever's left. Same formula as every other FIRE number, run on the remainder.
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Sample result
PreviewThis household's Barista FIRE number
$750,000
Funds $30,000 a year at a 4% withdrawal rate
Reached at
Age 52
Years away
22 years
Coast number
$197.7K
Coasting by
Age 40
Part-time work covers $22,000 a year, so the portfolio is $550,000 smaller than the full $1,300,000 number and arrives about 10 years sooner.
The sample's assumptions
- Age 30, retiring at 65
- $55,000 invested today
- $75,000 take-home pay
- Saving 25% of it ($1,563/mo)
- $52,000/yr target retirement spending
- 4% safe withdrawal rate
- 7% return, 3% inflation
- $22,000/yr part-time income
Run it with your own numbers
Create a free account to enter your own spending, edit every tier, and watch all four numbers update — saved across devices.
It isn't a different formula. It's a different lifestyle.
Every tier of FIRE runs the same arithmetic: the money you expect to spend in a year, divided by your safe withdrawal rate. Change the spending and you change the number — that's the whole difference between Barista FIRE and every other flavour.
$30,000 ÷ 4% = $750,000
Barista FIRE spending ÷ safe withdrawal rate = the portfolio that funds it indefinitely.
Lean FIRE
$910K
funds $36,400/yr
Coast number today $239.8K
Your target
$1.3M
funds $52,000/yr
Coast number today $342.6K
Fat FIRE
$2.6M
funds $104,000/yr
Coast number today $685.2K
Barista FIRE
$750K
funds $30,000/yr
Coast number today $197.7K
Every number here comes from the same household above — only the spending figure changes.
How the number shrinks
Subtract the income you'd earn part-time from the spending you need, then divide the remainder by your safe withdrawal rate. Every dollar the job covers is a dollar the portfolio never has to produce — and at a 4% withdrawal rate, each of those dollars is 25 fewer you have to save.
It isn't the same as coasting
Coast FIRE means your invested savings will grow into a full retirement on their own while you keep working to cover today's costs. Barista FIRE means you already have enough that a part-time income closes the remaining gap. People often reach them around the same time, but they answer different questions.
Explore the other flavours
Same calculator, same formula — a different spending figure each time.
Frequently asked questions
See your own barista number.
Create a free account to set your part-time income and watch every FIRE tier update on your real numbers — then learn the system behind them in Build Real Wealth.