Could you retire early? Run the FIRE math.i
FIRE comes down to one habit: earn more than you spend, and invest the gap early. Your savings rate — not your salary — decides how soon you're free. Pick a lifestyle and see the number.
Your path to FIRE
What’s a dollar really worth?
Two levers, opposite directions: extra investing pulls freedom closer, extra spending pushes it away. The catch with spending — it also raises your FIRE number, since you need 25× whatever you spend. Based on your numbers above.
What does a $75k lifestyle actually cost in BC?
A realistic, illustrative budget for the FIRE tier — grounded in Statistics Canada’s 2023 Survey of Household Spending and built with BC’s higher-than-average cost of living in mind. Switch tiers above to compare. Your own mix will vary; treat this as a sanity check, not a prescription.
| Category | Monthly | Annual | Share |
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Want to dig into the real numbers?
These categories are illustrative, but they’re anchored to official data on how Canadians — and British Columbians specifically — actually spend. For the source figures and deeper detail on typical spending habits:
- Statistics Canada — Survey of Household Spending, 2023 — the headline release: average spending by category, household type and income group.
- Average spending by province, 2023 — BC vs. the rest of Canada (BC households averaged $82,657, with 34.8% going to shelter).
- Table 11-10-0222-01 — full household-spending dataset — every line item, back to 2010, downloadable as CSV.
- Infographic: How Canadian households spent their money in 2023 — a quick visual overview of the categories above.
- BC Government — economic statistics — provincial data on prices, income and the cost of living.
The whole game, in three moves.
Popularised by Alex Hormozi and the FIRE movement — the math is simpler than it looks.
Earn more than you spend
Every dollar of gap between income and spending is a dollar of future freedom. Raising income only helps if the gap grows too.
Invest the gap — early
Money invested in your 20s and 30s has decades to compound. Time in the market is the cheat code; starting early beats starting big.
Don't let lifestyle creep in
When spending rises with every raise, freedom never arrives. Bank the raises instead of absorbing them and the finish line rushes toward you.
Savings rate is the lever that matters
Years to FIRE from $0, at a 5% real return — salary barely matters; the rate you keep does.
| Savings rate | Years to FIRE |
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The 4% rule: once your portfolio reaches 25× your annual spending, you can withdraw ~4% a year and reasonably expect it to last. That's your FIRE number.
Want the real, tax-aware version?
This is the simple back-of-napkin model. For the tax side — BC tax, CPP, OAS, RRSP vs TFSA sequencing, a realistic drawdown — our detailed BC financial independence calculator goes deeper, and that's where we can genuinely help. For the investing and financial-planning side, talk to a licensed financial advisor — and if you don't have one, ask us and we'll point you to a few we trust.
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