Semi-retire early. Work part-time for income and benefits. Let your portfolio cover the rest. You quit the career — not work entirely.
Your Barista FIRE number is the portfolio size where a withdrawal covers only the gap between your expenses and your part-time income: barista target = (expenses − part-time income) / withdrawal rate. Your Full FIRE number covers the whole expense figure the same way: full target = expenses / withdrawal rate. A lower target is reached sooner — that gap is the entire mechanism behind Barista FIRE.
Growth uses your real return — nominal return adjusted for inflation, compounded properly rather than just subtracted — so every number on this page is already in today's purchasing power. You never need to mentally adjust for 20 years of inflation; it's already handled.
The two lines on the chart are genuinely different paths, not the same line with a lower target overlaid. Stay employed keeps contributing at your full savings rate all the way to the Full FIRE line. Go Barista keeps contributing until it crosses the lower Barista target, then contributions drop to zero — the assumption is your part-time income exactly covers the remaining expense gap, with nothing left over to invest. From that point the portfolio only grows from market returns, which is why the purple line's slope visibly flattens after the Barista age. That flatter slope is also why reaching Full FIRE eventually takes a little longer via the Barista path — the “Delay to Full FIRE” figure above is exactly that cost, set against the years of part-time freedom you get in exchange.
Barista FIRE is a financial independence strategy where you save enough that your investment returns cover most of your living expenses, then switch to low-stress part-time work to cover the gap. The name comes from the idea of working as a barista at a coffee shop — not for the career, but for a small income and possibly health insurance (in the US).
Unlike traditional FIRE, which requires saving 25× your annual expenses before you stop working entirely, Barista FIRE lets you reach financial independence sooner by accepting a smaller portfolio and supplementing it with part-time earnings. Many people find this more realistic and sustainable — you stay socially connected, maintain structure, and reduce the sequence-of-returns risk that comes with drawing down a portfolio from day one.
This calculator models both phases: the accumulation years where you save aggressively, and the Barista phase where your portfolio grows more slowly while you earn part-time income. It accounts for investment returns, inflation, and the specific part-time income you expect to earn.