Barista FIRE calculator
Part-time income weighed against the portfolio it replaces — and the years of saving that trade hands back to you.
Barista FIRE number
$750,000
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What a part-time wage is worth
target = (spending − part-time income) ÷ withdrawal rate The striking part is the exchange rate. At a 4% withdrawal rate, every $1 of durable annual income is worth $25 of portfolio. A job paying $20,000 a year does the same work as half a million dollars of index funds — which is why Barista FIRE moves the finish line so much further than people expect when they first run it.
The caution is in the word durable. A portfolio at 4% is built to survive the bad decades. A part-time job is not, and it tends to vanish in precisely the recessions that damage the portfolio you were leaning on. The arithmetic treats the two as equivalent; the risk does not.
Assumptions on the counter
- Part-time income is treated as reliable and level, in today’s dollars.
- Health insurance is not modeled. In the US it is frequently the whole point of the strategy — put the premium, or the value of employer coverage, into the spending figure yourself.
- Income is counted after tax, like spending. Wages are taxed; portfolio withdrawals often are too, at different rates.
- Constant real return, annual compounding, contributions at year-end.
Questions people ask
What is Barista FIRE?
A halfway point: you have enough invested that part-time work only needs to cover part of your spending, with the portfolio covering the rest. The name comes from Starbucks, which has long offered health coverage to employees averaging 20 hours a week — the benefits mattered as much as the wage.
How much less do I need for Barista FIRE?
Every dollar of reliable part-time income removes 1 ÷ your withdrawal rate from the target. At 4% that is $25 of portfolio per $1 of income: earning $20,000 a year part-time cuts $500,000 off the number.
What about health insurance?
It is the reason this strategy exists in the US and it is not in the arithmetic above. Employer coverage at 20 hours a week can be worth more than the wage. If you are pricing an ACA marketplace plan instead, put the premium in your spending figure — it is one of the largest line items in an early retirement budget.
Should I count part-time income as reliable?
Carefully. A portfolio at a 4% withdrawal rate is meant to survive downturns; a part-time job is not, and it tends to disappear in exactly the recessions that hurt your portfolio. Treating $20,000 of wages as equivalent to $500,000 of index funds understates the risk, even though the arithmetic is identical.