Early Retirement Calculator
Get your date.
What age could you actually stop working? Not the pension age, not a rule of thumb - your number, from your income, spending, super and savings.
Your super is locked until 60. This works out the years in between, on Australian tax rules, from a handful of figures. No sign-up needed to try it.
- No sign-up needed
- Australian tax rules, year by year
- Free to try
Step 1
Quick FIRE Check
Current annual spending excluding your home mortgage.
Max $1,308/month to stay under concessional cap
What this calculator actually models
Most retirement calculators multiply your spending by 25 and stop there. That number is close to meaningless in Australia, because it ignores the two things that decide everything:
Your super is locked until your 60s. If you want to retire at 52, your super balance is real money, but you can't touch it for years. Retiring early means covering a gap - the years between your last payday and the day super unlocks - from savings and investments outside super. This calculator models that gap explicitly, so "you can retire at 52" means you can actually fund age 52 to 60, not just the years after.
Tax changes the whole picture. Salary, investment earnings and super are taxed differently, and the recent tax changes shift the numbers again. The projection here runs Australian tax rules year by year rather than assuming a flat return on a lump sum.
The three numbers that decide your retirement age
- Your annual spending. Not your income - what you actually spend. Every dollar less per year of spending takes roughly $25 to $30 off the total you need.
- Your savings gap money. What you hold outside super, and what you add to it each year. This funds the years before super unlocks, and for most early retirees it is the binding constraint.
- Time. Compounding does most of the heavy lifting. Small changes to your savings rate now move your retirement age by years, not months.
"Early retirement" has a name
The approach this calculator models is usually called FIRE - Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea is simple: once your investments can cover your spending indefinitely, work becomes optional. There are gentler versions too - working part-time while your investments grow, or reaching the point where you can stop saving entirely and coast to retirement. The full calculator models all of them.