Barista FIRE vs Coast FIRE
Two ways to step off the treadmill early. Coast FIRE means you stop saving; Barista FIRE means you stop working full-time. Enter one set of numbers and see your Coast number, your Barista number, and which one you reach first — instantly, no sign-up, no gated answer.
The one-line difference: Coast FIRE means you stop saving; Barista FIRE means you stop working full-time. With Coast FIRE you've front-loaded enough that growth alone reaches your full retirement number by your target age — so you keep your full-time job but quit contributing. With Barista FIRE you downshift to part-time now, and your portfolio plus a part-time wage cover spending together.
Which needs less money depends entirely on your part-time income — so the two numbers cross over. The calculator below returns both from one set of inputs and tells you which comes first for you.
At $60,000 spending and $25,000/yr part-time, Coast FIRE is the smaller milestone — $208,654, about $666,346 less than the other path. You reach a hands-off finish line sooner; you keep working full-time, just stop saving.
Raise part-time income and the two cross over — Barista keeps falling while Coast holds. Try it.
The shared anchor — $60,000 ÷ 4%, or 25× your spending. Stop working entirely.
Hit this and you can stop saving — keep working to cover today's costs, and coast to full FIRE by 65.
Run the full Coast calculator →Hit this and you can downshift to part-time (earning $25,000/yr) — your portfolio covers the rest.
Run the full Barista plan →Healthcare, Social Security and full year-by-year projections live on the dedicated pages — this comparison stays apples-to-apples. See the full Barista plan, with healthcare + Social Security →
Choose Coast, choose Barista
Both buy freedom; they spend it differently. The clean way to choose is to ask which constraint you most want gone — the savings grind, or the full-time schedule.
- You like your job (or don't mind it) and want to keep the income.
- You want to kill the savings pressure and redirect that money to life now.
- You have a long runway to traditional retirement for growth to compound.
- You'd rather not depend on finding reliable part-time work.
- You want out of full-time work now, not in twenty years.
- You have a part-time path that covers part of your spending.
- That path ideally comes with health insurance — the make-or-break variable.
- You're fine with some income still flowing in for a while.
The live number can override the vibe. If your part-time income is high, Barista needs less invested than Coast — the math may pick the path your gut didn't.
Can you do both?
Yes — and a lot of people do, in sequence. The two aren't rivals so much as stops on the same road.
Coast first, then Barista. Front-load your investing early, hit your Coast number, and stop saving. Years later, once the portfolio has grown, downshift to a part-time Barista arrangement — by then the gap it has to cover is small. Or Barista with a coasting portfolio: step back to part-time now, leave the invested balance untouched, and let it coast toward full FIRE in the background while your wage covers today.
The framing is "vs" because they're different decisions — but they stack neatly on a single timeline.
How each number is calculated
Both start from the same anchor — the full FIRE number, annual spending divided by your safe withdrawal rate, or 25× at 4%. The two paths discount it differently:
Coast asks "how little can I have today and still arrive on time without saving?" — so it shrinks with your time horizon and your real return r. Barista asks "how little covers the part my wage doesn't?" — so it shrinks with part-time income and ignores time entirely.
Worked example (the calculator's defaults). Spend $60,000, age 35, target 65, at 10% nominal / 3% inflation (≈6.8% real). Full FIRE is $60,000 ÷ 4% = $1.5M. Coast discounts that over 30 years: $1.5M ÷ 1.06830 ≈ $208,656. Barista covers the gap a $25,000 wage leaves: ($60,000 − $25,000) ÷ 4% = $875,000. For these numbers, Coast is the smaller milestone — but push the part-time income past ~$50k and Barista wins:
| Part-time income | Barista number | vs Coast ($208,656) |
|---|---|---|
| $0/yr | $1,500,000 | Coast wins |
| $15,000/yr | $1,125,000 | Coast wins |
| $25,000/yr | $875,000 | Coast wins |
| $35,000/yr | $625,000 | Coast wins |
| $45,000/yr | $375,000 | Coast wins |
| $55,000/yr | $125,000 | Barista wins |
Spending fixed at $60,000, a 4% withdrawal rate, and the default $208,656 Coast number (age 35 → 65). The crossover lands near $50k of part-time income: below it Coast is the smaller milestone, above it Barista pulls ahead. That tipping point is exactly what the live calculator finds for your inputs.
The trade-offs each one hides
Neither number is the whole story. The figure is the easy part; the risk it carries is what actually decides whether the plan holds.
- Sequence risk over a long coast. A bad run early, with no new contributions buffering it, can quietly push your arrival date back.
- Lifestyle creep. "Stop saving" is permission, not a rule — it's easy to spend the freed-up cash and never restart.
- It's a projection, not a paycheck. You're trusting a 30-year growth assumption; re-check it yearly.
- Income reliability. Part-time hours and benefits can be cut at the employer's whim — the plan leans on both.
- Health insurance. In 2026 the ACA cliff is back; this is the variable that makes or breaks it. The Barista page does that math →
- Less margin. A smaller portfolio means less cushion if the part-time path falls through.
How the comparison works
One set of inputs, three figures, all in today's dollars. The Coast number discounts the full FIRE number back at your real (after-inflation) return; the Barista number is rate-independent arithmetic. Every assumption is a field you can change.
- Full FIRE = annual spending ÷ SWR — a 25× multiple at the 4% default.
- Coast = Full ÷ (1 + r)n, with r the real return and n the years to your target age.
- Barista = (spending − part-time income) ÷ SWR — every dollar of reliable wage removes 25× that dollar from the number.
- 10% nominal growth / 3% inflation (≈6.8% real), matching the cluster; dial down to 7% for the conservative case.
- 4% safe withdrawal rate — the Trinity Study baseline. Pre-tax, today's dollars throughout.
- Healthcare, Social Security and year-by-year projections stay off here — they live on the dedicated Barista and Coast pages.
Full method, sources and edge cases: FIRE Projection methodology ↗.
Indie builder of FIRE Projection. I keep the cluster's assumptions current with the research and show my work — no email wall, no gated number.
Educational, not financial advice. Markets don't deliver a steady return, sequence-of-returns risk is real, and a long projection compounds small errors. Use this to frame the choice between two paths — not as a plan to act on without judgment for your own situation.
Pick your number here. Track it in the app.
This page settles the Coast-vs-Barista question. The app does the other half: it tracks your real net worth against your FIRE number as your accounts grow, so you can watch the gap close month by month and stress-test the plan.
- Net worth vs. your FIRE number — every account against the target, over time.
- Social Security, valued properly — net present value, with a benefit-cut haircut.
- Baseline vs. scenario — compare two plans side by side, live.
Straight talk: the app has no withdrawal-rate slider, no part-time-income lever, and no Coast/Barista "flavor" concept — that math lives here, on the web. The app is for tracking and stress-testing the number once you've picked it.
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