Financial independence tracker
When could work become optional?
Enter a few figures to get an estimated date. Nothing you enter here is sent anywhere. In the full app, add your assets, debts and retirement assumptions to test the same plan across 10,000 simulated scenarios.
Work out your own date
Your statement
Time to financial independence
18 years 4 months
That is January 2045, the year you turn 48.
Your numbers
That is 3.9% a year after inflation. The calculator uses this inflation-adjusted return to estimate the date.
This calculator is deliberately simple. It assumes the same investment return every year and shows all figures in today's money. Real markets do not behave that way. The full app tests the plan across 10,000 simulated scenarios using historical market and inflation patterns. Neither version calculates your personal tax, so use a before-tax retirement-income figure. Treat any date as an estimate for planning, not a promise.
What you track
No bank connections, and no aggregator holding a copy of your accounts. You record what you own and what you owe, update the balances when you like, and the projection follows. Every item below is something the product does today.
- Assets and liabilities
- Typed and categorised, each with its own monthly contribution or payment. A mortgage balance falls as you repay it; investments can grow at the return assumption you set.
- Balance updates by period
- Update every account for a month in one pass rather than editing rows one at a time. Skip a month and the history carries the last figure forward instead of dropping to zero.
- Exclusions
- Keep the house you live in, or the holiday fund, out of the independence maths without deleting it. Every total on every screen respects the same rule.
- Scenarios
- Layer a lump sum, a career break or a different return onto the projection and see the date move. The baseline stays where it was.
- Milestones
- Name the points that matter between here and the end — a paid-off mortgage, a first hundred thousand — and each one gets a date from the same projection.
- Display currency
- Choose how amounts are shown throughout the app. The same currency is used consistently across your dashboard and projections.
Every column in that table is an input to the date at the top of the page: what kind of thing it is, what goes into it each month, and what it is assumed to return. The badge on the house is the half of it that is jointly owned. The foot of the table separates what the holdings are worth from how much of that counts toward net worth, which is why a primary residence can sit in the list without funding anyone's retirement.
The part most trackers skip
Two people, one horizon
Most net worth trackers assume one person. Link a partner and the position becomes three columns — yours, theirs, and the household — measured against one target and one date. Your own column never disappears, so you can always see what changes and what does not.
- One statement, three columns
- The household column combines both people's figures, while each person's share remains visible.
- Both dates on one rail
- The horizon shows the household's date and your own beside it, so the difference the partnership makes is a distance you can see rather than a number to compare.
- Switch between your view and the household view
- Use the same dashboard for your own position or the combined household. Switching views does not change who owns each asset or debt.
| Line | You | Partner | Household |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assets | 182,400 | 141,900 | 324,300 |
| Liabilities | 96,200 | 18,400 | 114,600 |
| Net worth | 86,200 | 123,500 | 209,700 |
The same screen as the illustration beside it, with one toggle flipped. The columns are the real ones, the figures are the sample household's, and the rail is carrying two dates at once — the household's, and the earlier one this person would reach on their own.
Before you trust the date
What the projection assumes
A projection is only as honest as the assumptions under it, so here they are. The app uses the same ones, shows them on screen, and lets you change almost every one.
- Financial independence target (FI target)
- Your annual retirement-income target divided by your withdrawal-rate benchmark. At the default 4%, that is twenty-five times your annual income. It is a comparison point, not a guarantee that the portfolio will fund retirement.
- 10,000 simulated scenarios
- The projection shows a range of outcomes and the share of scenarios in which the plan funded your retirement income. This is more realistic than a single line that assumes markets return exactly their average every year.
- Drawn from the record
- Each scenario uses sequences based on historical UK inflation and market data. Returns still centre on the assumptions you choose; the historical data creates realistic variation around them.
- Today's money
- All projections are shown in today's money, so a future £40,000 is shown with roughly the purchasing power £40,000 has today. The model varies inflation between simulated years rather than assuming prices rise by exactly the same amount every year.
- Growth
- Annual, at the rate you set for each holding, so £100 at 7% becomes £107 rather than £107.23. Contributions are spread through the year rather than landing on the first of it. A mortgage amortises at its own rate and is netted off once inflation has been taken out of it.
- What the model does not include
- The model does not calculate personal tax or the different tax treatment of pensions, ISAs and taxable investments. It does not rebalance your portfolio, so holdings can drift as some grow faster than others. Pension access ages are respected where the product has enough information to apply them.
How it works
Four steps, and the fourth is the only one you repeat.
- 01
Open it in your browser
The app runs in your browser and keeps the financial information you enter there. No account or sign-up is needed.
- 02
Record what you own and what you owe
Enter each account once, with its balance, its expected growth and anything you pay into it. Mark anything you do not want counted as excluded.
- 03
Set the retirement income you need
That before-tax figure and your withdrawal-rate benchmark give you an FI target. Add milestones between here and there if you want intermediate estimates.
- 04
Update the balances when you like
Monthly is plenty. Each update extends your history and moves the date, and the projection re-reads every assumption you set.
Read the small print on that chart. The sample household's money lasts in around seven thousand of the ten thousand futures, so it runs out in nearly three of every ten. That is a household most trackers would call on course, and a single averaged line would have drawn it comfortably funded. The other three thousand are the whole reason the projection is not a line.
See where you would stand
The whole product, running in your browser. Your figures stay there and are never sent anywhere — no account, nothing to cancel, and you can save a copy whenever you like.
