What is my savings rate, and how many years to FI at that rate?
Find your savings rate from take-home pay and spending, the years to financial independence at that rate, and how you compare with households your age.
Withdrawal rate
The 4% rule: 30-year US market history (Bengen 1994; Trinity study).
YOUR SAVINGS RATE
46%
At these inputs you save $51,400 of your $111,400 a year, a 46% savings rate; starting from $420,000, you reach the $1,500,000 that $60,000 a year needs at a 4.0% withdrawal rate in 12.6 years, at age 47.
Years to FI
12.6
Saved a year
$51,400
FIRE number
$1.50M
Funded today
28%
UNDERSTAND YOUR RESULT
Years to FI at each savings rate
5%
41.9 yrs
10%
36.0 yrs
15%
31.2 yrs
20%
27.1 yrs
25%
23.6 yrs
30%
20.5 yrs
35%
17.8 yrs
40%
15.3 yrs
45%
13.1 yrs
46%Your rate
12.6 yrs
50%
11.0 yrs
55%
9.1 yrs
60%
7.3 yrs
65%
5.7 yrs
70%
4.2 yrs
75%
2.7 yrs
At your 46% savings rate FI takes 12.6 years. At 55% it takes 9.1 years, 3.5 years sooner.
Where your income goes
Of $111,400 a year (take-home pay plus pre-tax savings), $60,000 goes to spending and $51,400 is saved: a 46% savings rate.
How you compare with households your age
You, against households aged 25–34 (% of pay before tax)10.7
Peers 10.2%
In 2024, households aged 25–34 put 10.2% of their income before taxes toward retirement plans and Social Security tax (BLS). Your $4,400 of retirement contributions and $11,093 of payroll tax come to 10.7% of your $145,000 pay, 0.5 points above that, which is in line: gaps within 1 point are noise, not a signal. This is a narrower measure than your savings rate above: for the average household 72% of it is Social Security tax, and saving outside retirement plans is left out.
What the peer figure is made of
All households, 2024 (BLS)You
Social Security and Medicare tax
6.4
7.7
Retirement plans and pensions
2.4
3
Across all households in 2024, BLS counts $6,684 of the $9,222 in this line as Social Security deductions, 6.4% of income before taxes, and 2.4% as retirement plans and pensions. Yours is 7.7% payroll tax and 3.0% retirement contributions. BLS publishes the split only for all households, not by age, and the line leaves out saving outside retirement plans, so it is narrower than total saving.
What moves the needle
Each row re-runs the calculation with one change. Click to apply.How it's computed
FORMULA
Savings rate = (take-home + pre-tax savings − spending) ÷ (take-home + pre-tax savings)
FIRE number = spending ÷ withdrawal rate; Balance(n) = P·(1 + r)ⁿ + S·((1 + r)ⁿ − 1) ÷ r, S = yearly savings ÷ 12
Years to FI = first month n with Balance(n) ≥ FIRE number, ÷ 12
Comparable rate = (pre-tax savings + Social Security and Medicare tax on your pay) ÷ pay before tax; peer rate = the BLS line ÷ income before taxes
- Income is your take-home pay plus any pre-tax savings you enter, and savings is that income minus spending. Employer contributions count only if you add them.
- Spending stays the same after you stop working. In the chart each rate keeps your $111,400 of income fixed and changes spending to match, so the FIRE number moves too.
- Returns are after inflation: a 7.0% return with 3.0% inflation is a 3.88% real return, so everything is in today’s dollars.
- Savings are added every month in today’s dollars. Taxes on withdrawals are not modeled.
- The search stops at 60 years; a rate that does not reach the number by then is left off the chart.
- The comparison uses the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2024, grouped by the age of the reference person: households (BLS “consumer units”) aged 25–34 averaged $102,494 of income before taxes and $10,447 in “Retirement, pensions, and Social Security”. That line counts what employees pay into Social Security (BLS asks about pay deducted for “Social Security including Medicare”) and into retirement plans. Employer contributions and saving outside retirement plans are not in it.
- Your comparable rate is built the same way: your pre-tax savings, treated as retirement contributions, plus the payroll tax on your pay before tax (6.2% Social Security up to $184,500 plus 1.45% Medicare, 2026 rates), worked out as if all of it were wages from an employer, unless you say no one is paid wages. It leaves out the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax above $200,000, self-employment tax, and any retirement saving from take-home pay, such as a Roth IRA.
- The BLS figure is a group average that includes households putting nothing in; it is set by age only, not adjusted for income, and it is not a target. Treat a gap of a point or less as noise.
WORKED EXAMPLE · SAMPLE NUMBERS
Savings rate: ($107,000 + $4,400 − $60,000) ÷ $111,400 = 46%. FIRE number: $60,000 ÷ 4.0% = $1,500,000. Starting from $420,000 and saving $4,283 a month at a 3.88% real return, the balance first reaches it in month 151: 12.58 years. Comparison: ($4,400 + $11,093) ÷ $145,000 = 10.7%, against 10.2% for households aged 25–34.
SOURCES
[1]Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Table 1300. Age of reference person, 2024U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics[2]Consumer Expenditures — 2024 (news release USDL-25-1586), Table AU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 19, 2025[3]Topic no. 751, Social Security and Medicare withholding ratesInternal Revenue Service[4]The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early RetirementMr. Money Mustache, 2012 (origin of the savings-rate-to-years concept)[5]Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical DataBengen, Journal of Financial Planning, 1994; Cooley, Hubbard & Walz (Trinity study), 1998
HSBuilt by Hussain Sehorewala · checked against worked examples · Sep 29, 2026
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Questions about this result
Divide what you save in a year by your income. Here income is take-home pay plus any pre-tax savings such as 401(k) or HSA contributions, and savings is that income minus spending. Some tools divide by gross pay instead, which gives a lower percentage for the same habits.
Starting from nothing, with 7% returns, 3% inflation and a 4% withdrawal rate, about 17.6 years, whatever the income. What sets the wait is the share you save, not the dollar amount, because the number you need scales with what you spend. Money you already have invested shortens it.
Two things change at once. You add more each month, and you spend less, which lowers the FIRE number. At a 4% withdrawal rate every $1,000 you cut from yearly spending removes $25,000 from the number and adds $1,000 a year to your savings.
Your own pre-tax contributions do: add them to the pre-tax box and they count as both income and savings. An employer match is money you never see in your paycheck. If you want it counted, add it to the same box; leaving it out gives a lower rate.
There is no official threshold; it depends on how soon you want to stop and how much you already have. To see the trade-off, from a standing start with 7% returns, 3% inflation and a 4% withdrawal rate this calculator gives about 30.8 years at 30%, 17.6 years at 50% and 9.0 years at 70%. The comparison with households your age is a narrower measure, retirement-plan contributions plus Social Security tax, so its percentages are not comparable with the total savings rate above.
No. A 401(k) percentage is a share of salary going into one account. Your savings rate counts everything you set aside, in any account, against take-home pay plus pre-tax savings, so it is usually higher than the 401(k) percentage alone.
BLS publishes only a narrower figure than your savings rate: the share of income before taxes that households put toward retirement plans and Social Security tax. In 2024 it was 9.0% for households under 25, 10.2% at 25–34, 10.0% at 35–44, 10.0% at 45–54, 9.4% at 55–64 and 4.2% at 65 and older. For the average household, 72% of that line was Social Security tax deductions, so it says little about how much people save. Treat a gap of a point or less as noise. The comparison on this page shows where you sit, and it is not a target.
BLS counts the tax taken from pay in the same line as retirement contributions: its interview asks about pay deducted for “Social Security including Medicare”. In its 2024 release the average household’s line was $9,222, of which $6,684 was Social Security deductions and $1,991 was contributions to retirement plans. To compare like with like, this page adds the Social Security and Medicare tax on your pay (6.2% up to $184,500 in 2026, plus 1.45%) to your own retirement contributions. Employer matches are not part of the BLS line, so leave them out.
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