Dieses Tool auf Deutsch: Finanzielle-Freiheit-Rechner
This FIRE calculator for Europe works out how many years of saving stand between you and the point where invested capital covers your spending. It runs on euros, on one slider, and on real returns after inflation, costs and tax. Move the savings rate and the year moves with it.
At a 20% savings rate and a 5% real return your capital covers your spending after 35.3 years, as long as that spending stays flat in real terms and you then withdraw 4% a year.
At a 40% savings rate the same setup finishes in 20.9 years instead of 35.3.
| Year | Age | Wealth | Share of your number |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 30 | €10,000 | 1.4% |
| 2031 | 35 | €52,547 | 7.3% |
| 2036 | 40 | €106,850 | 14.8% |
| 2041 | 45 | €176,155 | 24.5% |
| 2046 | 50 | €264,608 | 36.8% |
| 2051 | 55 | €377,499 | 52.4% |
| 2056 | 60 | €521,579 | 72.4% |
| 2062 | 65.3 | €720,000 | 100.0% |
Assumptions: you set them, we do not
The 4% default is US arithmetic. For retirement cohorts 1900 to 1979 the highest withdrawal rate that survived every 30-year retirement was 4.02% in the United States and 1.14% in Germany, and 4% held in 4 of 17 countries. That ranking assumes perfect foresight over 5,151 asset allocations with no fees; with a plain fixed 50/50 split of stocks and bonds, 4% succeeded in none of the 17. Your call, not our recommendation.
The 4% rule is a US number, and Europe is not the US
The withdrawal rate in the assumptions box decides your FIRE number, and almost every calculator hands you 4% without saying where it came from. Bengen established the rule in 1994 from historical simulations on US data. The Trinity study tested it in 1998 on US data running from 1926 to 1995, over a 30-year retirement, before tax and costs.
Wade Pfau ran the same test country by country for retirement cohorts 1900 to 1979, on Dimson-Marsh-Staunton data running to 2008. The highest withdrawal rate that survived every 30-year retirement was 4.02% in the United States, whose worst starting cohort was 1969. In Germany it was 1.14%, set by the cohort that retired in 1914. Across 17 countries a 4% withdrawal held in four: Canada at 4.42%, Sweden at 4.23%, Denmark at 4.08%, the United States at 4.02%.
Those are best-case figures, and Pfau says so. His table is titled Sustainable Withdrawal Rates with Perfect Foresight Assumption: every retiree picks, with hindsight, the best of 5,151 allocations for the next 30 years, and no fees leave the portfolio. He calls the assumption one that "is not realistic and artificially inflates the SAFEMAX". Take the hindsight away, give each retiree a plain fixed 50/50 split of stocks and bonds, and 4% succeeded in none of the 17 countries. Not four. Zero. The generous version is quoted above because it favors the rule, and it still fails in most of the world.
The cost is visible in the box above. At 4%, spending of €2,400 a month needs €720,000 and 35.3 years. At Germany's 1.14% best case, the same spending needs €2,526,316 and 58.5 years. The withdrawal field accepts both, and everything between.
One reason the German figure is so much lower: German equities returned 2.8% a year in real terms from 1900 to 2008, standard deviation 32.5%, against 6.01% for US equities. Two world wars and a currency reform sit inside that average.
Your salary is not the lever. The gap is.
Give yourself a 10% raise, keep the same savings rate, and this calculator moves the date about 0.1 years later (from 35.3 to 35.5 after rounding). The direction is not a rounding artifact: the raise lifts your spending by 10% too, so your FIRE number climbs by 10% while the €10,000 already invested stays €10,000.
Start from zero capital and the effect is exactly zero: with nothing invested, the year count does not depend on income at all, only on the share you keep. We test that as an exact equality on every build rather than a tolerance, because it is the claim this tool is built around.
A pay rise helps only when it widens the gap between earning and spending. Spend all of it and you have bought a more expensive life, not an earlier date. That is the argument for a savings-rate calculator over a planner with dozens of fields.
How this FIRE calculator for Europe works
A model, not advice and not a forecast. You set the assumptions; we carry them through. Markets move, tax law changes, and so do lives.
Write s for the savings rate, r for the real return, w for the withdrawal rate, I for annual net income, K0 for what is already invested. Normalized by annual income, a is the target as a multiple of income and k your capital in the same units:
a = (1 - s) / wk = K0 / Iwhen r is not zero: n = ln((a + s/r) / (k + s/r)) / ln(1 + r)when r is zero: n = (a - k) / s
Four assumptions carry all the weight, and all four are yours to disagree with:
- Everything is real. Every amount stays in current purchasing power, and r is the return after inflation, after costs and after tax. Inflation is not a second field, so it cannot be counted twice.
- Work is optional when capital reaches annual spending divided by w. At 4% that is 25 times annual spending. It is a threshold, not a promise: this page says covers, never guarantees.
- Spending is flat in real terms and equals (1 - s) times income, before and after the threshold.
- Contributions land once a year, at year end, and compound annually. Monthly contributions would give 34.99 years instead of 35.35. The annual convention stays because it is the one the published anchors match most closely, and the gap is printed rather than hidden.
Rounding. Years to one decimal; positive values under 0.05 years print as less than 0.1, because 0.0 years would be the wrong claim for a reader not yet there. Euro amounts to the nearest euro, percentages to one decimal, except the withdrawal rate, which carries two so that a rate like 1.14% still names the number beside it, and the contribution-convention comparison above, which carries two because the whole point of it is a third of a year. Figures quoted from a source keep the precision the source gives them, so 2.8% and 4.02% appear here as their sources write them; 26.375% keeps all three decimals because it is the exact product of two statutory rates (25% times 1.055), not a source figure. Nothing is rounded twice.
Tax lives inside r, not in a field of its own. A German investor pays 25% capital gains tax plus the 5.5% solidarity surcharge, so 26.375%; equity funds carry a 30% partial exemption, bringing the effective rate to roughly 18.46%; and the first €1,000 of investment income each year is exempt, €2,000 for couples assessed together. Subtract that from the return you type in.
And the state pension? Deliberately not a field: modeling its size would be a claim we would have to defend. If you already know your expected net pension you can still fold it in. Subtract it from your monthly spending, then put your saving plus the remaining spending in the monthly-income field, not your income; the savings rate is then your saving divided by that figure. At the default state, €2,400 of spending, €600 saved and €1,000 of expected pension leave €1,400 of remaining spending, so €2,000 in the field and a 30% savings rate. The answer is 26.6 years against a FIRE number of €420,000, and the tile still reads €600, which is what you actually save. Leave your income in the field and simply raise the savings rate instead, and the calculator credits you with saving you do not do, and the answer comes out far too early. Read the date for what it is: it is when your capital covers the part of your spending the pension will not, and it holds only from the day the pension is actually paid. Between that date and your pension age you still need the full €2,400 a month, and this model funds only €1,400 of it, so the years in between are a gap you have to bridge some other way.
The engine was checked against a second, independently written implementation across 150,150 input combinations: 0 mismatches, 18 of 18 properties, and 8 of 8 anchors: 4 of 4 external, 4 of 4 analytic identities. Networthify's default renders 12.4 years and ours returns 12.4. Mr Money Mustache puts a 10% savings rate at 51 years; our table says 51.4, and 42.8 at 15%.
Savings rate to years to financial independence
Zero starting capital, a 4% withdrawal rate, contributions once a year. Every cell comes out of the engine that answered your question at the top, and the build fails if one cell drifts. No English-language FIRE calculator ranking for this search publishes such a table. One German page does, and it prints a 7% header over 5%-real numbers; a second feeds the same wrong values into FAQ schema, so the error travels into rich results and AI answers. That is why ours is generated rather than typed.
| Savings rate | 3% real return | 5% real return | 7% real return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 92.2 | 65.8 | 52.2 |
| 10% | 69.3 | 51.4 | 41.7 |
| 15% | 56.1 | 42.8 | 35.3 |
| 20% | 46.9 | 36.7 | 30.7 |
| 25% | 39.9 | 31.9 | 27.1 |
| 30% | 34.2 | 28.0 | 24.0 |
| 35% | 29.5 | 24.6 | 21.4 |
| 40% | 25.5 | 21.6 | 19.0 |
| 45% | 22.0 | 19.0 | 16.9 |
| 50% | 18.9 | 16.6 | 15.0 |
| 55% | 16.2 | 14.4 | 13.1 |
| 60% | 13.7 | 12.4 | 11.4 |
| 65% | 11.5 | 10.5 | 9.8 |
| 70% | 9.4 | 8.8 | 8.3 |
| 75% | 7.5 | 7.1 | 6.8 |
| 80% | 5.8 | 5.6 | 5.4 |
| 85% | 4.2 | 4.1 | 4.0 |
| 90% | 2.7 | 2.7 | 2.6 |
Work backwards: name a date, get the savings rate
The field above bisects the same model: it searches savings rates until it finds the lowest one that reaches your number in the time you named, so a date you name and the rate it returns are always consistent. From the default state, what each finish date costs:
| Finish in | Rate needed |
|---|---|
| 10 years | 65.4% |
| 15 years | 52.5% |
| 20 years | 41.8% |
| 25 years | 33.1% |
| 30 years | 26.1% |
Rates round up, never to nearest, so each reaches its date instead of landing just short. The slider steps in tenths of a point, so it holds these answers exactly.
Withdrawal rate, multiple, FIRE number
Your FIRE number is annual spending divided by the withdrawal rate. Nothing else. Below, spending of €2,000 a month priced at five withdrawal rates.
| Withdrawal rate | Multiple of annual spending | FIRE number at €2,000 a month |
|---|---|---|
| 2.5% | 40 times | €960,000 |
| 3% | 33.3 times | €800,000 |
| 3.5% | 28.6 times | €685,714 |
| 4% | 25 times | €600,000 |
| 5% | 20 times | €480,000 |
Two people, three runs through the same engine
Maya, 29, Berlin. €3,200 net a month, saves 15%, €8,000 invested. FIRE number €816,000, reached in 41.5 years at age 70.5; €480 aside, €2,720 to live on. Well above the seasonally adjusted German household savings rate of 10.3% for the first half of 2025, and it is still not an early retirement. The honest half of this calculation.
Tomas, 36. €4,800 net, saves 45%, €130,000 invested. FIRE number €792,000 in 14.4 years, at age 50.4; €2,160 aside, €2,640 to live on. Set the targets side by side: €792,000 against Maya's €816,000, almost the same pile. Tomas gets there in a third of the time because his gap is wider, not because he earns more.
Tomas again, at 3%. One changed assumption. His target rises to €1,056,000 and the date moves from 14.4 years to 18.2, at age 54.2. That is what caution costs, priced in years, and against Germany's 1.14% (itself Pfau's perfect-foresight best case) it is still optimistic.
What this FIRE calculator cannot tell you
- Sequence-of-returns risk. A single smooth path like the one above never happens. Two people with the same average return and savings rate end up somewhere very different depending on when the bad years arrive.
- Health insurance outside employment. In Germany leaving work does not end the premium; it changes who pays it.
- Tax in detail. One number, r, carries all of it, whatever account you hold it in.
- Your own inflation. Rent, childcare and health costs rarely track the national index that real returns are measured against.
- Life. Reduced earning capacity, parental leave, caring for a relative, a move abroad, a divorce.
- Contributions that change. Your savings rate is held flat for the entire run. Real ones rise, fall and stop.
A calculator claiming to model those would be selling certainty it does not have. This one computes what you set and stops there.
Frequently asked questions
How many years to financial independence at my savings rate?
At the default state, a 20% savings rate on €3,000 net a month with €10,000 already invested, it takes 35.3 years. The savings rate is what moves it: from zero capital at a 5% real return and a 4% withdrawal rate, 10% takes 51.4 years, 20% takes 36.7, 30% takes 28.0, 50% takes 16.6.
Does a higher salary get me there sooner?
Not on its own. With no starting capital the year count does not depend on income at all, only on the share you keep: a raise you spend lifts your spending and your FIRE number equally. At the default state, where €10,000 is invested, a 10% raise at an unchanged savings rate moves the date from 35.3 to 35.5 years.
What is the 4% rule, and does it work in Europe?
You withdraw 4% of your capital in the first year of retirement, then adjust for inflation. Bengen established it in 1994; Trinity tested it on US data from 1926 to 1995. Pfau ran it across 17 countries for cohorts 1900 to 1979 and it held in four: Canada, Sweden, Denmark, the United States. Germany's highest sustainable rate was 1.14%. Both of Pfau's figures assume perfect foresight over 5,151 allocations with no fees; with a plain 50/50 split 4% succeeded nowhere.
What real return should I assume in Europe?
We recommend none. For orientation: since 2000, world equities have returned 3.5% a year in real terms (UBS Yearbook 2025; the dataset covers 35 markets). German equities returned 2.8% a year from 1900 to 2008, standard deviation 32.5%, US equities 6.01% over the same period (Pfau 2010, on DMS data). Those are gross index figures. What you type is the return after inflation, costs and tax, so it belongs noticeably below them.
What is my FIRE number?
Your annual spending divided by your withdrawal rate: 25 times at 4%, 28.6 at 3.5%, 33.3 at 3%. On €2,000 a month that is €600,000, €685,714 or €800,000. There is no spending field here, because spending is what is left after saving: raising the savings rate lowers both your spending and your FIRE number. The arithmetic is currency-agnostic: read the euro signs as pounds, francs, or kroner and nothing changes.
How do German taxes change the picture?
Germany taxes investment income at 25% plus the 5.5% solidarity surcharge, so 26.375%. Equity funds get a 30% partial exemption, putting the effective rate near 18.46%, and the first €1,000 each year is tax free, €2,000 for couples assessed together. Subtract your expected tax drag from the real return you type in.
What are Coast FIRE, Lean FIRE and Fat FIRE?
Coast FIRE means you stop adding and let what you hold compound to the target. To see it here, set the savings rate to 0 and put your current spending, not your income, in the income field: a 0 rate alone raises spending to your whole income and moves the target. On the default figures, €10,000 coasting toward €720,000 takes 87.7 years. Lean and Fat FIRE are the same arithmetic with smaller or larger spending.
What does this FIRE calculator not model?
Sequence-of-returns risk first: a single smooth return path never occurs, and the order of good and bad years changes the outcome even when the average matches. Also absent: state pensions, health insurance after you stop working, tax beyond the one real-return field, your own rate of inflation, and life events. The savings rate is held flat, which no real one is.
Sources
All cited sources retrieved September 9, 2026; Networthify as an external anchor on August 26, 2026. Wade Pfau, An International Perspective on Safe Withdrawal Rates from Retirement Savings, GRIPS Discussion Paper 10-12, also Journal of Financial Planning 23(12):52-61, Table 3 for the country rates, Table 1 for the equity returns, sections 2 and 4 for the perfect-foresight assumption and the 50/50 result; archived here because the host is a third party · UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2025, Dimson, Marsh and Staunton (35 markets; cited here: the world real equity return since 2000, from the public summary) · Cooley, Hubbard and Walz, Retirement Savings: Choosing a Withdrawal Rate That Is Sustainable, AAII Journal, February 1998 (the Trinity study, US data 1926 to 1995) · Statistisches Bundesamt, press release PD25_N059_81 of October 28, 2025 (the German household savings rate, first half of 2025, seasonally adjusted) · Networthify and Mr Money Mustache, The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, used as external anchors; the second is archived here, because the original returns 403 and its table is an image.
Changelog
Version 1.0.4, September 9, 2026. First publication; versions 1.0.0 through 1.0.3 were internal verification builds before release. Found and fixed by review before release: an empty field could produce a confident "already free" answer; the withdrawal floor moved from 2% to 1% so Pfau's 1.14% can be entered; his perfect-foresight caveat and the 50/50 result now travel with every quotation of the country rates; the Bengen and Trinity windows were separated; the Coast FIRE recipe was wrong; reverse-solve rates now round up so each reaches its date; the headline stops naming an age beyond a lifespan; the analytics sentence now says measurement runs only after cookie-notice consent; permalinks are namespaced and cleared from the address bar. Before any code: the default is 35.3 years, not the hand-typed 35.4, and a zero savings rate with capital invested is reachable. Verification: 150,150 differential cases, 0 mismatches, 18/18 properties, 8/8 anchors, in the verification record (in German).
Published September 10, 2026 · Last updated September 10, 2026 · Wild Garden Editorial Team · Last verified September 9, 2026 · Calculation tested against an independent reference implementation (150,150 test cases, 0 mismatches); the reverse solve covered by a further 12,607 cases. Our editorial standards (in German) · Spotted an error? redaktion@wildgarden.io
A model, not advice. This page recommends no savings rate, no return, no withdrawal rate and no product. It carries the assumptions you set to their conclusion and says where each number came from.
The calculator stays free and needs no account, with no email wall and no form. If a calculation you need is missing, write to us: redaktion@wildgarden.io
More from the garden
All calculators live under Tools. Two that pair with this one: Net Worth Percentile Germany places the capital you hold against everyone else's, and the Wheel of Life checks whether money is your biggest lever right now.
