VestFire · Financial independence planning for India
VestFire — financial independence, calculated for India
The corpus at which work becomes optional, built from your numbers rather than a rule of thumb.
What is VestFire?
VestFire is Vestmind's financial independence (FIRE) product. It calculates the corpus at which work becomes optional for an Indian household, modelling Indian returns, category-specific inflation, equity LTCG and slab-rate debt taxation, individual goals and post-retirement income, then stress-testing the result across thousands of market paths.
The usual answer — twenty-five times your annual expenses — is a United States result imported without its assumptions. It was derived from US returns, US inflation and a thirty-year retirement. An Indian household planning forty or fifty years, with healthcare inflating at roughly nine percent while an EMI does not inflate at all, and with equity LTCG and slab-rate debt taxation reducing what a corpus can actually spend, is not the household that rule was built for. VestFire computes the number from the household's own cash flows instead.
What it looks at
What VestFire looks at
Expenses by category
Housing, healthcare, education and lifestyle inflate at different rates, so they are projected separately.
Goals
Each goal is a dated liability at its own inflation rate, not an average smeared across every year.
Taxes
Equity LTCG above the annual exemption and slab-rate debt taxation, applied to each year's withdrawal.
Post-FIRE income
Rental, pension, business and annuity income reduce what the corpus has to fund.
Allocation
The equity and debt mix, which sets both the expected return and the sequence risk.
Confidence
The share of simulated futures in which the plan holds — a lever the investor sets, not a hidden constant.
What it does
What VestFire does
A number in under a minute
Four inputs produce a first estimate with no account and no signup.
Monte Carlo simulation
Thousands of return and inflation paths rather than one average, because an average path is the one outcome nobody experiences.
Category-specific inflation
Healthcare at its rate, housing at its own, an EMI at zero.
Explicit tax treatment
Each year's withdrawal grossed up so what reaches the household is what the plan needs.
Historical stress tests
How the plan holds through a 2008-style crash, a 2020-style crash and a stagflation decade.
Levers
What actually moves the date: spending, savings rate, allocation, retirement age, confidence level.
How it works
How VestFire works
The method, in order. Each step is described in full in the Vestmind methodology library.
Collect
Current age, target age, household spending, invested assets — then, optionally, the expense breakdown, goals, taxes and post-retirement income.
Project liabilities
Each expense category and each goal is compounded at its own inflation rate to the year it falls due.
Simulate
Thousands of market paths are generated from India-specific return and inflation assumptions and run across the full retirement horizon.
Tax each withdrawal
Equity LTCG above the exemption and slab-rate debt taxation are applied year by year, and withdrawals grossed up accordingly.
Solve
The corpus reported is the smallest one that funds the plan in the chosen share of simulated futures.
Stress-test
The same corpus is re-run through historical crash and stagflation sequences to show where it breaks.
Who it is for
Who VestFire is for
Planning to stop working early
You want the number at which work becomes optional, built from your own spending rather than a rule of thumb.
Testing the 25× rule
You have heard "25 times your expenses" and want to know whether it holds with Indian inflation and taxes.
Goals along the way
Children's education, a home or care for parents have to be funded before, or during, independence.
Checking Coast FIRE
You want to know whether your current portfolio already gets there with no further contributions.
Illustrative example
VestFire in practice
- ₹3 crore by the 25× rule
- 25 × ₹12 lakh. It assumes one inflation rate, no tax on withdrawals and a 30-year retirement.
- ~9% healthcare inflation, modelled on its own
- The category that grows fastest late in life, while an EMI that ends does not inflate at all.
- 12.5% equity LTCG above ₹1.25 lakh
- Withdrawals are grossed up, so what reaches the household is what the plan actually needs.
- 40+ years of retirement, not 30
- A longer horizon lowers the rate that can be withdrawn safely each year.
VestFire replaces the single multiple with a simulation over your own cash flows, so the number moves with your plan rather than with a rule.
Compared
VestFire compared with the alternatives
| Approach | What it tells you | What it cannot see |
|---|---|---|
| The 25× rule of thumb | A starting estimate in one multiplication. | Inflation by category, tax on withdrawals, goals, and a horizon longer than 30 years. |
| Generic retirement calculator | A corpus at one assumed return. | The range of outcomes — one return path hides the risk of a bad decade early on. |
| Spreadsheet model | Whatever you build. | Monte Carlo simulation and historical stress tests. |
| Fee-only financial planner | A personalised plan. | Nothing in principle — VestFire gives you a number to take into that conversation. |
| VestFire | A FIRE number from your own expenses, goals, taxes and income, stress-tested across thousands of market paths. | Certainty: the result is a probability, at a confidence level you choose. |
Your data
Your data
Read-only by construction
Vestmind reads holdings, positions and balances. No broker adapter implements an order method, so there is no code path that could buy, sell or move anything.
Secrets stay on the server
Broker API secrets and access tokens never reach your browser, and the page never calls a broker directly. The exchange happens between Vestmind's servers and the broker.
Not sold, not shared
Portfolio data is used to produce your analysis and is never sold. It is shared only with the providers needed to deliver the service, such as your broker, or where the law requires.
Your control
Connect or disconnect any source, update your information, download your data or request deletion at any time.
How Vestmind protects your data, in full: Security and your data.
FAQ
Common questions about VestFire
Everything you need to know about VestFire before getting started.
Contact usWhat is VestFire?
VestFire is Vestmind's financial independence product. It calculates the corpus at which work becomes optional for an Indian household, modelling Indian returns, category-specific inflation, equity LTCG and slab-rate debt taxation, individual goals and post-retirement income, then stress-testing the result across thousands of market paths. It is free and needs no account.
What is a FIRE number?
Your FIRE number is the size of the investment portfolio at which work becomes optional — the corpus that can fund your remaining lifetime expenses without you needing to earn again. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, though most people who reach it keep working on their own terms rather than stopping.
How much money do I need to retire in India?
It depends far more on your own numbers than on any rule of thumb. The conventional answer is twenty-five times annual expenses. In India that is usually too crude in both directions: it ignores that healthcare inflates at roughly nine percent while an EMI does not inflate at all, that equity LTCG and slab-rate debt taxation reduce what a corpus can actually spend, and that rental income, a pension or a business can carry a meaningful share of retirement spending. VestFire computes the number from your own cash flows instead.
Does the 4% rule work in India?
Not as written. The 4% rule comes from US studies over a thirty-year retirement using US equity and bond returns and US inflation. Indian inflation has run materially higher, Indian debt returns less real, and a FIRE plan is usually forty to fifty years rather than thirty. VestFire derives a sustainable withdrawal rate from your own horizon, allocation, taxes and chosen confidence level, and it is typically lower than 4%.
How does VestFire treat taxes?
Explicitly. Equity long-term capital gains are taxed at 12.5% above the ₹1.25 lakh annual exemption. Debt funds bought after the April 2023 reclassification are taxed at slab rate with no indexation. Each year's withdrawal is grossed up so that what reaches your hand is what your plan actually needs.
What confidence level should I choose?
Ninety percent is the balanced default: the corpus funds the plan in nine out of ten simulated futures. A conservative planner with no ability to earn again can push to 95%. Someone with flexible spending, marketable skills or a partner still working can reasonably sit at 75% and see the corpus fall. The point is that the threshold is a choice, not a hidden constant.
Should my children's education be part of my FIRE number?
It should be funded, but not by averaging it into monthly expenses. VestFire models each goal as its own future liability — current cost compounded at that category's inflation to the year it falls due — and reserves it, so a one-off ₹50 lakh education bill in 2036 is not silently smeared across forty years of spending.
What is Coast FIRE and does VestFire calculate it?
Coast FIRE is the point at which your existing portfolio, left entirely alone, will grow into your FIRE number by your target age — so you only need to cover current expenses from here. Adding existing investments and monthly investment to VestFire shows exactly this: the projection gives the age at which the portfolio crosses the line, and whether it gets there without another rupee.
Is VestFire free?
Yes. It is free, needs no account, and the calculation runs in the browser — figures are not sent anywhere unless you choose to continue into VestStudio and build a plan.
How is a Monte Carlo FIRE calculation different from a simple one?
A simple calculator applies one average return to every year, which describes a future nobody gets. A Monte Carlo calculation runs thousands of ordered sequences of returns and inflation, which exposes sequence risk — the fact that a bad decade at the start of retirement is far more damaging than the same decade at the end, even though both have the same average.
Try VestFire
The corpus at which work becomes optional, built from your numbers rather than a rule of thumb.