FVequals is a financial independence planning tool built around one central question: how much do you actually need to stop working? Rather than applying a generic rule of thumb, FVequals builds your FI number from your real spending, your actual accounts, and historical market data — then shows you how far away you are and what levers move the needle.
1. The Core Idea
Financial independence means your investment portfolio generates enough income to cover your living expenses indefinitely — without you needing to work. The size of that portfolio (your FI Number) depends on two things: how much you spend, and how safely your portfolio can sustain withdrawals over a long retirement.
FVequals calculates your FI Number from your actual budget, projects how your current savings and income will grow toward it, and compares your withdrawal rate against decades of historical market data to tell you how durable your plan is.
The formula behind the name: FV = PV · (1 + r)ⁿ — the future value equation. Your portfolio today (PV) grows at a rate (r) over years (n) toward the future value (FV) you need. FVequals is built around making that math personal to you.
2. Step 1 — About You
The About Me tab captures the personal details that shape every calculation in the app:
- Current age and target retirement age — sets the projection timeline and determines how many years your portfolio needs to sustain withdrawals
- State of residence — drives your state income tax rate, which affects after-tax income and how much you need to save
- Tax filing status — determines your federal tax brackets (single, married filing jointly, or head of household)
- Household size — used in healthcare cost modeling and certain tax calculations
- FIRE strategy — Traditional, Lean, Fat, Barista, or Coast FIRE, which shapes how the app models your retirement lifestyle
- Housing situation — whether you rent or own affects how housing costs are projected through retirement
These fields are set during the initial setup wizard and can be updated at any time in the About Me tab. Changing your retirement age or state will immediately recalculate your projections.
3. Step 2 — Income & Investments
The Income & Investments tab tells the app where your money comes from and what you have saved today:
Income
- Annual gross income — your salary before taxes and deductions. For self-employed users, this is net business income before personal taxes.
- Spouse income — if filing jointly, modeled independently with its own tax calculation
- Employment type — determines payroll tax treatment (W-2 vs. self-employed SE tax) and which retirement accounts are available
Investment Accounts
Enter your current balances across all account types. FVequals models each account separately because they have different tax treatments at withdrawal:
- Traditional 401(k), 403(b), IRA — pre-tax; taxable at withdrawal
- Roth IRA / Roth 401(k) — after-tax contributions; tax-free growth and withdrawals
- Brokerage / Taxable Accounts — no contribution limits; capital gains tax applies
- HSA — triple tax advantage; modeled as a healthcare reserve in retirement
- Pension / Annuity — fixed monthly benefit that reduces the portfolio size you need
- Social Security — estimated monthly benefit at your retirement age
Fixed income sources (pension, Social Security) are subtracted from your annual spending need before the FI Number is calculated, directly reducing how large your portfolio needs to be.
4. Step 3 — Your Budget
The Budget tab is the heart of the FVequals approach. Your spending — not your income — determines your FI Number.
FVequals organizes your budget into the 8 major spending categories used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI):
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Housing | Rent or mortgage, property taxes, insurance, HOA, utilities, maintenance |
| Food & Beverages | Groceries, dining out, alcohol, coffee |
| Transportation | Car payments, insurance, fuel, maintenance, public transit |
| Healthcare | Insurance premiums, out-of-pocket costs, prescriptions |
| Entertainment | Streaming, hobbies, recreation, travel, subscriptions |
| Apparel | Clothing, footwear, accessories |
| Education & Communication | Phone, internet, tuition, books |
| Other | Personal care, miscellaneous household expenses |
Each category is inflated independently using its own historical CPI rate. Healthcare, for example, inflates faster than clothing. This produces a more accurate projection of your real spending at retirement than applying a single average inflation rate to your total budget. See Methodology for details.
Retirement Spending Models
You can choose how your spending changes in retirement:
- Conservative — spending decreases modestly at retirement (lower commuting costs, no savings contributions, reduced work-related expenses)
- Average — spending stays roughly flat in real terms
- Risky — spending increases at retirement (travel, leisure, healthcare)
5. Step 4 — Your Results
The Results tab brings everything together. After running your projection, you see:
Your FI Number
The portfolio size required for your annual spending to be sustainably withdrawn indefinitely — calculated from your actual budget, inflated to your retirement date using CPI rates, and divided by a historically-derived safe withdrawal rate.
Historical Failsafe Check
Your projected withdrawal rate is compared against the historical failsafe withdrawal rate — the highest rate that has never failed across all historical 30-year retirement periods since 1926. If your rate is at or below the failsafe, your plan has survived every historical market scenario the data covers.
Portfolio Projection Chart
A year-by-year view of your portfolio growing from today toward your FI Number. The chart shows whether your current savings rate and investment balance put you on track, ahead, or behind your target retirement date.
Coast FIRE Number
The portfolio balance at which — if you stopped contributing today — compound growth alone would carry you to your FI Number by retirement. Once you hit your Coast FIRE number, every additional dollar you save accelerates your timeline; you are no longer dependent on future contributions to reach FI.
On-Track Status
A clear indicator of whether your current trajectory reaches your FI Number by your target retirement age, how many years early or late you are projected to arrive, and what your withdrawal rate looks like at retirement relative to the historical failsafe.
6. Scenarios & Tax Details
Scenarios (What-If Tab)
The Scenarios tab lets you stress-test your plan by adjusting key variables — retirement age, savings rate, spending, expected return — without overwriting your actual plan data. You can save up to 3 named scenarios to compare side by side. This is where questions like "what if I retire 3 years earlier?" or "what if I reduce housing costs by $500/month?" get answered with numbers.
Tax Details
The Tax Details tab breaks down your estimated federal income tax, state income tax, and payroll tax based on your income, filing status, and state. It shows your effective tax rates, after-tax income, and how much of your gross income becomes take-home pay available for saving and spending.
7. What Makes FVequals Different
Most financial independence tools apply the same generic 4% rule to everyone. FVequals takes a different approach on three fronts:
- Budget-first FI Number. Your FI Number is calculated from your actual spending budget, not from your income or a multiple thereof. Two people with the same income but different lifestyles need very different portfolios.
- Category-level inflation. Rather than applying one average inflation rate, FVequals inflates each spending category at its own historical CPI rate. Healthcare inflates differently than food, which inflates differently than transportation. Your projected retirement budget reflects these real differences.
- Historical SWR, not just 4%. The 4% rule is a starting point, not a guarantee. FVequals shows you exactly where your withdrawal rate sits relative to every historical 30-year retirement period, including the worst sequences (1929, 1966, 2000). You see the actual historical failure rate of your plan, not just a rule of thumb.
FVequals is an educational planning tool. All projections are estimates based on historical data and your inputs. See our Terms of Service for the full disclaimer.