Do you know how much you need to invest each month to retire in X number of years? Well today I’m sharing a Financial Independence Retire Early and Compound Interest Calculator I created in Microsoft Excel that assisted me in finding the answer out for myself.
Late last year as I was approaching burn out I decided that in 2021 we would be taking a different approach to achieving our financial independence goals. We decided to calculate how much we actually needed to invest each month to reach financial independence, and contribute just that amount. Anything above that would be put towards living our best lives now (and not waiting for early retirement).
In the process of calculating our monthly figure I decided to create a simple calculator in Microsoft Excel. After creating the calculator and inputting our details it was clear that we could to take the pedal off the gas a little from 2021 onwards, and adjust our investing goals. This had the awesome consequence of me being able to reduce my hours at work, and will enable us to do more renovations to the house to improve our comfort levels.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who could benefit from doing a similar FI/FIRE Calculation so I’ve decided to upload this free to my blog (no sign up required although I would love it if you did).
I’ve included a few screenshots below of what the calculator looks like so you can make the decision to download or not (Please note the data in the spreadsheet and screenshots is example data only – not mine). The link to download the file is at the end of this post.
The spreadsheet contains two worksheet tabs:
- FI / FIRE Goal Calculator – Where it calculates your FI number and gives you an indicative amount of how much you need to invest to hit your FI/FIRE goal.
- Compound Interest Calculator – This is just a bonus really so you can have a play around and see what the future value of your investments may be.
To download the file simply click on the download link below.
To view my other Personal Finance Templates please feel free to visit me at ‘The Frank Basics’ Etsy Store.
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Frank on FIRE 
Thanks for sharing the calculator!
I was wondering, what sort of assets would you consider as early retirements assets? I currently hold mostly real estate (illiquid), pension funds (some not accessible until a certain age), stocks / ETFs and cash (no upside potential).
I’m not sure which of these I should be counting to arrive at a reasonably fair projection, as I don’t think these will all move similar. Also, while real estate will provide passive income, I can’t withdraw from principal there. So I’m a little confused as to how best to account for the different asset classes.
Thanks for any thoughts!
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Good question. I can only comment on my own personal situation and I only count my taxable brokerage account as I can’t access my retirement accounts at all until my 60’s (in Australia). However if I had rentals I would also count these. I don’t count my house currently but we plan on selling it/renting it out once the kids move out.
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Thanks for the reply! That makes sense to me. I guess I’ll count my rentals but not my own home plus my accessible pension and investment accounts and just assume a more conservative value increase overall.
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calculating your monthly figure I decided to create a simple calculator in Microsoft Excel. After creating the calculator and inputting your details it was clear that we could to take the pedal off the gas a little from 2021 onwards, and adjust our investing goals.
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