BorderFolio/FIRE tracking
What BorderFolio tracks for FIRE
Last reviewed 5 September 2026
A FIRE plan is three numbers: what you spend, what you add, and what your portfolio earns. BorderFolio already measures the last two from your real record — contributions dated and priced as they happened, dividend income projected per holding. Tell it the first one, what you spend per month, and it computes the rest: your FIRE number at four withdrawal rates, the years to each at the pace you actually keep, and how much of your life your dividends already cover after tax. Every assumption behind those figures is stated on this page.
Your FIRE number, from your own spending
You set one input: monthly spending, in whatever currency you spend it — it does not have to match the portfolio's currency. BorderFolio annualizes it, converts it at a real exchange rate, and computes the target for four withdrawal-rate scenarios:
| Withdrawal rate | Target (× annual spending) | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 3% | 33.3× | Conservative — long horizons, non-US evidence |
| 4% | 25× | The headline scenario — the Trinity-study convention |
| 5% | 20× | Aggressive |
| 6% | 16.7× | Optimistic |
Four scenarios, not one number, on purpose: the withdrawal rate is the most consequential assumption in the whole plan, and it is yours to choose, not ours. What the rates mean and where 4% comes from is on the What is FIRE page.
Until you enter a spending figure, no target is shown. BorderFolio does not guess your cost of living from your country or your portfolio size — an invented input would make every figure downstream of it fiction.
Years to target, from the pace you actually keep
Time-to-target is solved from three inputs, and it matters where each one comes from:
- Current portfolio value — live market prices for listed holdings, in the portfolio currency.
- Monthly contribution pace — measured from your actual contribution record, not from a plan or a promise. If your real pace is irregular, the estimate inherits that honestly.
- Expected growth: 7% nominal per year, compounded monthly — a deliberately conservative long-run estimate for global equity, and the same assumption used across BorderFolio's projections, so no two screens can disagree.
Three honesty rules apply. A target you have already passed reads as reached, not recomputed. When no growth path exists — no contributions and no growth, or a target the inputs cannot reach — the answer is "no path at current inputs", never a made-up horizon. And the years shown are a scenario, not a schedule: 7% nominal ignores inflation, and the target is computed from today's spending, so treat the figure as "at these inputs, this long" rather than a date to circle.
How much of your life dividends already cover
For anyone whose FIRE plan runs through income rather than selling shares, the operative question is: what share of my spending does the portfolio's income already pay for? BorderFolio answers it with a deliberately strict numerator:
- Projected annual dividend income is computed per holding from trailing yields;
- then reduced by your home dividend tax rate — the rate you configured, or your tax residence's default — because coverage only counts in money you can spend;
- then divided by your annual spending.
The result is the coverage percentage the live on income milestone ladder is built on: 25% covered, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%. The last rung is there on purpose — income that exactly matches spending has no margin, and 125% is what a margin looks like.
The source-side tax layer — withholding by fund domicile before the dividend ever reaches you — is tracked separately, per holding, and is where an international investor's income quietly leaks. How the two layers stack.
Milestones for three strategies
Progress needs rungs, and the right rungs depend on how you are getting there. BorderFolio tracks a milestone ladder per strategy:
| Strategy | What is laddered | The rungs |
|---|---|---|
| Accumulate | Portfolio value | $10K → $50K → $100K → $250K → $500K → $1M, continuing to $2.5M and beyond once seven figures is crossed |
| Build income | Monthly passive income | $50 (the phone bill) → $100 → $400 (groceries) → $1K → $2.5K → $5K (the rent) |
| Live on income | Share of spending covered by dividends | 25% → 50% → 75% → 100% → 125% |
Value and income ladders are scaled to round numbers in your portfolio currency — a euro investor aims at €100K, not €85,480, because the psychological point of a milestone is that it is round. Crossing a rung is celebrated once, and the trajectory strip always shows the next unreached rung rather than congratulating you on ones long passed.
The rest of the FIRE picture
The independence math sits on top of what BorderFolio already tracks, and a FIRE plan uses all of it:
- Contributions separated from market growth — the savings-rate half of FIRE, measured per month: pace, streak, gaps, and how much of the balance is your money versus the market's. The methodology.
- Monthly portfolio history — snapshots that make progress reviewable, not just a today-number.
- Cross-border tax drag — withholding estimated per holding from fund domicile × your tax residence, which for a plan funded from dividends is not a rounding error. Methodology.
- Contributions at the exchange rate of the day — so a currency swing shows up as market movement, not as a fictional change in your savings pace.
The assumptions, in one place
- Expected growth is 7% nominal, monthly compounding — not inflation-adjusted, not personalized to your allocation.
- The contribution pace is assumed to continue; the model does not forecast your income or your discipline.
- Withdrawal rates are scenarios, taken from the standard FIRE literature; showing four of them is the product's way of saying none of them is a promise.
- Dividend projections use trailing yields — the past pattern, not a forecast of fund decisions.
- The target inherits today's spending; your spending in retirement is your estimate, and the figure is only as good as it.
All of it is informational, never advice — the same rule as every estimate in the product.