Coast FIRE Number at 28

Retiring at 65 with a 7% return, 3% inflation and a 4% withdrawal rate, in today's dollars.

How fast you get there from $40,000

Starting at 28 with $40,000 invested and planning to spend $60,000 a year, here's when you'd cross the line at different monthly contributions.

If you’re 28 and plan to spend $60,000 a year in retirement, your Coast FIRE number is $366,327. You almost certainly have less than that, and it’s too early for the gap to worry you. This is often the year of the first raise that feels like real money, and where that raise goes does more to set your Coast FIRE age than anything already sitting in your account.

Where should the first real raise go?

A raise is the cheapest money you’ll ever save, because you haven’t built your spending around it yet. Six months from now it will feel like your normal salary. This month it still feels like extra.

I’d move part of it into your 401(k) before the first larger paycheck arrives. Most plans let you change your contribution percentage online in a few minutes, and a change made the week the raise lands never registers as a pay cut. You won’t come close to the $24,500 employee limit for 2026 on a first raise, so room in the plan isn’t the issue. Keep the rest of the raise and enjoy it. A plan that leaves you nothing to show for a promotion rarely lasts.

Student loans or investing?

Mostly it comes down to the interest rate on each loan. Once you’re getting the full employer match, I’d attack anything charging more than about 7%, because paying it off is a guaranteed return the stock market won’t promise you. Under about 5%, I’d pay the minimum and invest the rest. In between, split the difference and don’t agonize over it. As the example below shows, a couple of years of extra loan payments costs less Coast FIRE time than most people expect.

What I wouldn’t do is stop retirement contributions entirely until the loans are gone. Four or five years without contributions in your late 20s is a much bigger cost than a slower loan payoff.

What to do with the 401(k) from your old job

By 28 a lot of people have one, often a few thousand dollars in a default fund nobody has looked at since orientation. You can leave it with the old plan, roll it into your new employer’s plan, roll it into an IRA or cash it out. Only the last one does real damage.

Ask for a direct rollover, where the old provider sends the money straight to the new plan or IRA. If the plan pays it to you instead, it has to withhold 20% for taxes, and you then have 60 days to deposit the full amount, which means making up that 20% from your own cash (IRS rollover rules). And if the balance is small, your old employer may be allowed to move it out of the plan without waiting for you (IRS), so open the mail from a plan you’ve forgotten about.

Check your vesting schedule before the next job change, too. Your own contributions are always 100% yours. Employer money can take up to three years to vest all at once, or up to six years on a graded schedule (IRS vesting rules). Quitting a month before a cliff date can mean walking away from the whole match.

Kofi at 28

Kofi just got his first real raise, from $64,000 to $76,000. He has $31,000 invested, $9,000 of it still in the 401(k) from his first job, and $1,500 a month going into his current plan counting the match. He owes $26,000 on student loans at around 6%. He expects to spend $50,000 a year in retirement, which puts his Coast FIRE number at $305,272. He has 10% of it.

The $400 is 40% of his raise before tax, and it moves his date more than anything else in the table. Putting the loans first for two years gets him to Coast FIRE about 9 months later than starting the extra $400 today, and it leaves him debt-free sooner. At a 6% rate I’d be happy with either choice. Leaving his contribution at $1,500 is the one that costs him years.

The old 401(k) matters more than its size suggests. Left invested, that $9,000 grows to about $36,852 in today’s dollars by 65 at the site’s default assumptions. Cashed out, it would shrink right away to whatever is left after income tax and, in most cases, the 10% additional tax for early withdrawals. A direct rollover into his new plan costs him nothing and usually takes a phone call or an online form.

What to get done before 30

Contribute a percentage of pay rather than a fixed dollar amount, so every raise lifts your savings a little without any effort. Put a reminder in your calendar for the week raises usually land at your company, and bump the percentage then. Get every old 401(k) into one place, so the balance you see is the balance you have.

Then pick a loan payoff pace from the rates on your statements, not from how much the balance annoys you. A 4% loan can sit there for years without hurting your Coast FIRE date much. To see how a few hundred dollars a month compounds over 37 years, try the compound interest calculator, and how to reach Coast FIRE covers choosing a monthly amount you’ll actually keep up.

Other ages: 25, 30, 31, 32, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55. Or see every age on one table.