What is Coast FIRE?
Coast FIRE means your existing investments, given nothing but time, will grow into the full retirement fund you need by the age you plan to stop working. After that point you still earn money — but only to live on today. The saving race is won, and every extra dollar becomes optional rather than obligatory. For the complete mechanics, the flagship Coast FIRE Calculator owns the formula walkthrough, and the FIRE glossary defines the vocabulary.
This Australian edition runs the same verdict-first arithmetic through your system, where superannuation changes the shape of the problem entirely. Enter your position, get one verdict — coasting, on track, or behind — and if it comes back Behind, the exact monthly amount that repairs it.
How super changes Coast FIRE
In most countries, coasting means deliberately redirecting money into investments for decades. In Australia, part of that machinery already exists and runs whether you think about it or not. Superannuation is the coast mechanism: employer contributions keep flowing into your fund under the super guarantee — 12% of ordinary earnings at this writing — even in years when you personally save nothing. Meanwhile the money stays locked until your preservation age of 60, which sounds like a limitation but is actually the point: locked money compounds undisturbed.
What the lock does change is sequencing. A traditional Australian plan has outside-super assets bridging any pre-60 retirement, with super taking over at preservation age and possible Age Pension entitlements behind that. Inside this calculator, enter the combined balance across super and non-super investments as your invested assets; the growth maths treats them identically, and the pension fields below handle what happens after 67.
The Age Pension: enter it conservatively
Open Advanced settings and enter an annual amount plus the age it starts. Payments begin at 67 and are means-tested against your assets and income, so the figure worth entering is rarely the headline rate — the full single rate sits around $30,000 a year (check Services Australia for current rates), but decades of shifting thresholds make false precision pointless. Many planners enter a conservative partial amount they could plausibly receive after means-testing, then treat anything above it as margin. The engine responds by splitting your plan in two: a bridge fund covering spending from retirement until payments begin, then a smaller portfolio requirement once they carry part of the budget.
A worked example
Charlotte is 32 with $150,000 invested across her super balance and a share portfolio outside it. She spends $4,500 a month, adds $1,000 a month herself, and targets stopping work at 60, assuming a 7.5% nominal return against 3% inflation. These are this page's defaults, so her situation is exactly what loads on screen.
- FIRE number: $54,000 of annual spending ÷ a 4% withdrawal rate = $1,350,000 at age 60.
- Coast number at 32: $407,698. Charlotte is about 37% of the way there, so the verdict reads Behind.
- The solver's fix: adding $318/month gets her there by 60.
Behind simply means the current pace falls short — and names its own cure. Note also what the example leaves out: every dollar her employer keeps contributing to super during those years makes the real picture better than the raw contribution field suggests, which is why Australian plans so often look Behind on paper and On Track in practice. Flip the crash test to see how the verdict survives a 30% market drop.
Frequently asked questions
Does my super count toward the Coast FIRE number?
Not only does it count — for most Australians it is the core of the calculation. Enter the combined balance of your superannuation plus any shares, ETFs or savings held outside super as your invested assets, and include your regular personal contributions in the monthly amount. Super being locked away until your preservation age of 60 is not a flaw here; money nobody can touch is money that compounds undisturbed for decades, which is exactly what coast FIRE assumes. The calculator treats every dollar identically for growth. Where the split genuinely matters is sequencing — if you intend to stop working before 60 you will need outside-super money to bridge those years, which the two-bucket approach below handles.
How does the 12% employer guarantee help me coast?
The superannuation guarantee means your employer keeps paying into your fund even during the lean years — including the years after you have stopped saving anything yourself. That is the quiet magic of coasting in Australia: once your balance alone is projected to grow into your retirement number, career changes, part-time work and sabbaticals all keep adding to super anyway. Every dollar of that compulsory contribution is growth you would otherwise have to fund through salary sacrifice or personal saving. Model it honestly: put your expected take-home saving into the monthly contribution field and let the guaranteed employer flow sit underneath as ballast rather than double-counting it.
How should I enter the Age Pension?
Under Advanced settings, enter an annual amount and the age it starts. The Age Pension begins at 67 and is means-tested against your assets and income, so the honest entry is rarely the full rate. For scale, the full single rate is roughly $30,000 a year — check current rates with Services Australia — but decades of shifting rules make precision pointless. A conservative approach is to enter a partial amount you could plausibly receive even after means-testing, then treat whatever arrives above that figure as bonus margin rather than budget. The engine uses your entry to build a two-phase plan: a bridge fund covering spending from retirement until payments begin, and a smaller portfolio requirement once they start covering part of the budget.
What if I want to retire before 60?
Use two buckets. Super stays locked until your preservation age — 60 for most people reading this — so retiring at 52 means eight or more years funded entirely from outside super: ETFs, shares, offset-account savings. Size bucket one yourself: multiply the annual spending you expect before 60 by the number of years until access, add a buffer, and hold that amount outside super while letting the superannuation fortress compound untouched behind it. Then run this calculator with your total position and a retirement age of 60 to confirm the verdict still holds. It is more manual work than the maths strictly deserves, but the structure is sound: an outside-super bridge first, locked super as the main force, and possible Age Pension entitlements as the final cushion.
Are the Australian default assumptions reasonable?
This page opens at a 7.5% nominal return with 3% inflation — slightly punchier than the US default, reflecting the long-run strength of Australian equities, but well within what historical data supports. Converted properly, (1 + nominal) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1, that is roughly 4.4% real, and every output appears in today's Australian dollars rather than inflated future figures. Both numbers adjust under Advanced settings, and the worthwhile exercise is cutting them: try 6.5% and 3.5% inflation, watch the coast number climb, and ask whether your plan survives pessimism. Optimistic defaults are how Australians end up working years longer than their spreadsheet promised — the crash-test toggle on this page exists for exactly that reason.
Whatever the wrapper, the discipline is identical. For the full formula treatment, the flagship calculator owns it; if part-time work beats full coasting for you, the Barista FIRE Calculator sizes the bridging income; when the verdict reads Behind, check the FIRE number behind the target or convert your savings rate into years to FI. Know your number before you hand in anything.