Chubby FIRE calculator
Comfortable, without going all the way to Fat FIRE. The middle of the range — and the loosest label in the whole vocabulary.
To live on $125,000 a year, you need
$3,125,000
That is 25× your annual spending, at a 4% withdrawal rate. On this page's bands (one convention, not a definition), $125,000 a year is labeled Chubby FIRE.
These cut-offs are conventions the community uses loosely — there is no standard definition, and different groups draw the lines in different places. Treat them as vocabulary, not thresholds you have to hit.
Spending is taken at face value — if tax or health cover is not already inside your figure, your real target is higher.
A label defined by what it isn't
Chubby FIRE was named from the middle outwards. Lean described people cutting hard; Fat described people not cutting at all; a lot of people were somewhere between and had no word for it.
That origin is why it is the vaguest of the tiers. It has the least agreement behind its boundaries of any FIRE label, and nobody has authority to settle them. We would rather tell you that than print a threshold and imply it means something.
What the middle actually costs
The tiers feel like lifestyles. In the maths they are just multiples, and the jumps between them are larger than they sound.
| Annual spending | Portfolio needed at 4% | Band this page uses |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $1,000,000 | Lean FIRE |
| $75,000 | $1,875,000 | Regular FIRE |
| $125,000 | $3,125,000 | Chubby FIRE |
| $200,000 | $5,000,000 | Fat FIRE |
Every row is the same sum — spending ÷ 4%. The labels in the last column are conventions, not definitions. What the table really shows is that moving up one tier is rarely a small decision: it is measured in extra years of working, not in extra comfort.
Common questions about Chubby FIRE
- What is Chubby FIRE?
- Chubby FIRE is early retirement on a comfortable spending level — more than a frugal plan, less than an affluent one. It exists mostly because people wanted a word for the middle: 'Lean' felt too tight and 'Fat' felt like it described someone else. The arithmetic is unchanged: annual spending divided by a withdrawal rate you choose (4% is the common starting point, from Bengen (1994), a study of US history over 30-year retirements, and not a guarantee).
- How much do you need for Chubby FIRE?
- There is no official threshold, and the label is used loosely, so there is no range to quote. For scale only: $100,000 a year of spending at a 4% withdrawal rate is a portfolio of $2.5m, and $200,000 a year is $5m.
- What's the difference between Chubby FIRE and Fat FIRE?
- Only the spending level, and therefore the number. That sounds trivial but it is the whole point: doubling your target spending doubles the portfolio you need. Going from $100,000 to $200,000 a year moves the target from about $2.5m to about $5m at a 4% rate — and the extra years of work are what buys the difference.
- Is Chubby FIRE a real category?
- It is real vocabulary and not much more. No one certifies these tiers and different communities place them differently. They are useful as shorthand for describing a lifestyle, and unhelpful the moment they become a standard you feel you have to qualify for.