Coast FIRE Number at 25: How Much to Have Invested
At 25, an example saver needs about $142,046 invested to coast to retirement with no new contributions - and across real market history that plan held up about 82% of the time.
That's roughly what an example saver - $40,000/yr spending, a 5% real return, retiring by 65 - would need invested at 25 to stop contributing and still reach a $1,000,000 target through growth alone. These figures are computed at build time from Coastward's real-history engine, not hand-picked.
What coasting at 25 actually means
At 25 you hold the rarest asset in investing: time. Forty years of untouched compounding means a comparatively small sum today can grow into a full retirement, which is why the coast number here is the lowest on this page. The flip side is four decades of market weather to sit through, so the ORDER those returns arrive in matters more at 25 than at any other age.
The honest part most calculators skip: $142,046 is the straight-line answer. When we replay that exact plan across thousands of real market sequences - crashes in their true order - it reached retirement intact in about 82% of histories. A coast number isn't a guarantee, it's a probability. See how that's computed →
Run your own coast number at 25
Open the calculator prefilled for this example, then change the spending, return, and target to match your life - and watch the fan chart of real histories redraw.
Frequently asked
How much do I need invested to Coast FIRE at 25?
For an example saver spending $40,000/yr and assuming a 5% real return to age 65, the Coast FIRE number at 25 is about $142,046. Your own number depends on your spending, target age, and return assumption - run it in the calculator.
Is 25 too late to Coast FIRE?
Far from it: 25 is the easiest age to coast. With about 40 years of growth ahead, the amount you need invested today is the smallest of any age here. The real question isn't whether it's too late, it's whether the balance can weather a long stretch of markets, which is exactly what the success rate on this page measures.