Barista FIRE Calculator
Semi-retirement, priced. Find the portfolio you need when a part-time job covers part of your spending — and how many years that buys you.
Your numbers
Result
Barista FIRE assumes part-time income covers part of your spending and the portfolio funds the rest at your chosen withdrawal rate. Health cover, tax, and the sequence of returns are not modelled, and part-time income is treated as reliable for as long as you need it.
Barista FIRE is the halfway house. Instead of building a portfolio big enough to cover everything you spend, you build one big enough to cover the part that a modest, low-stress job does not. The name comes from the American habit of taking a coffee-shop job for the health insurance, but the idea travels: any part-time or seasonal income that covers a slice of your spending shrinks the portfolio you need by twenty-five times that slice.
How the number is calculated
Take your annual spending, subtract the part-time income you expect to earn, and divide the remainder by your withdrawal rate. If you spend $48,000 and expect $20,000 from part-time work, the portfolio only has to produce $28,000 a year. At 4%, that is $700,000 rather than the $1.2m full FIRE would require — half a million dollars less, which in most plans is several years of work.
Barista FIRE number = (annual spending − part-time income) ÷ withdrawal rate
Why the leverage is so large
Every unit of recurring income is worth twenty-five units of portfolio at a 4% withdrawal rate. That is the whole trick. A part-time job paying a fifth of your spending removes a fifth of your FIRE number. It also means the reverse is true: if the part-time income disappears, the shortfall it leaves behind is twenty-five times larger than the annual figure suggests. Treat the job as load-bearing, and keep a buffer.
Barista FIRE, Coast FIRE and full FIRE
These three get muddled constantly, so it is worth being precise.
- Full FIRE — the portfolio covers all of your spending. You never have to work again.
- Barista FIRE — the portfolio covers part of your spending and you work part-time for the rest. You are drawing down now.
- Coast FIRE — your work covers all of your spending, so the portfolio is never touched and simply compounds to a full retirement number later. You are not drawing down at all. See the Coast FIRE calculator.
The dividing line between Barista and Coast is whether you are withdrawing. If your part-time income covers everything, you are coasting, not baristaing, and your portfolio keeps growing.
The things this calculator cannot price
Two risks dominate real Barista FIRE plans. The first is health cover: in countries without universal healthcare, the benefit attached to a part-time job is often worth more than the wage, and losing it can add five figures to annual spending. The second is sequence-of-returns risk. Because you start withdrawing much earlier than a traditional retiree, a poor first decade has longer to do damage. A lower withdrawal rate, or a willingness to increase hours in bad years, is the usual defence.
Tax is not neutral either
Part-time earnings are usually taxed as income, while portfolio withdrawals may be a mix of return of capital, dividends and long-term gains taxed more gently. Enter your part-time income net of tax so the comparison is honest, and remember that earned income may also affect means-tested subsidies.
Questions, answered
What is Barista FIRE?
It is semi-retirement: you stop full-time work once your portfolio can cover the part of your spending that a part-time job does not. The portfolio is smaller than a full FIRE number, so you reach it years earlier, but you keep working in a reduced capacity.
How is Barista FIRE different from Coast FIRE?
Barista FIRE draws on the portfolio while you work part-time. Coast FIRE does not touch the portfolio at all — your income covers all of your spending and the investments compound untouched until a normal retirement age.
How much does part-time work reduce the number I need?
At a 4% withdrawal rate, every unit of reliable annual income removes twenty-five units from the target. Ten thousand a year of part-time earnings cuts a quarter of a million from the portfolio you need.
Is a 4% withdrawal rate safe if I retire in my thirties?
It is less comfortable than for a thirty-year retirement, because the money has to last longer and an early run of poor returns has more time to compound against you. Many people planning a long semi-retirement use 3–3.5%, or plan to work more in bad years.
What happens if I lose the part-time job?
Your required portfolio jumps by twenty-five times the lost income. The usual protections are a cash buffer of one to two years of the gap, flexible spending, and choosing part-time work that is easy to replace.