# VestFire — financial independence, calculated for India > 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. Canonical page: https://vestmind.in/vestfire Use it: https://vestmind.in/fire-number Availability: Free to use (https://vestmind.in/pricing) Last updated: 2026-09-30 ## 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 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 VestFire works 1. **Collect.** Current age, target age, household spending, invested assets — then, optionally, the expense breakdown, goals, taxes and post-retirement income. 2. **Project liabilities.** Each expense category and each goal is compounded at its own inflation rate to the year it falls due. 3. **Simulate.** Thousands of market paths are generated from India-specific return and inflation assumptions and run across the full retirement horizon. 4. **Tax each withdrawal.** Equity LTCG above the exemption and slab-rate debt taxation are applied year by year, and withdrawals grossed up accordingly. 5. **Solve.** The corpus reported is the smallest one that funds the plan in the chosen share of simulated futures. 6. **Stress-test.** The same corpus is re-run through historical crash and stagflation sequences to show where it breaks. ## 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. ## VestFire in practice (illustrative example) **One household, two ways.** A household spending ₹12 lakh a year today, planning to stop working in its early forties. - **₹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. ## 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 - **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. ## Common questions about VestFire ### What 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. --- Published by Harshadip Das, Founder & CEO, Vestmind. Vestmind is not a registered investment adviser; nothing here is personalised investment advice.