Coast FIRE for Tech Workers

Coast FIRE is the point at which you have saved enough in invested assets that — even without any additional contributions — your portfolio will compound to your full retirement target by a conventional retirement age. Once you hit the Coast FIRE number, you can stop aggressive saving and simply work enough to cover your current living expenses. The portfolio does the rest without any further help. For tech workers who have been saving aggressively for 5–10 years, Coast FIRE often arrives far earlier than expected — sometimes a decade before traditional retirement age.

The term "coasting" captures the dynamic precisely: you have climbed the hill, and now you can let momentum carry you to the destination without continued effort. The freedom in Coast FIRE is not about stopping work — it is about removing financial survival from the list of reasons you work. You can take a lower-paying job, move to a lower-cost city, take a sabbatical, or make career decisions based entirely on what you want to do rather than what you are paid to do.

The Coast FIRE Number: How It Is Calculated

The Coast FIRE number depends on three variables: your target retirement portfolio, your expected real return, and your time horizon to conventional retirement. The formula:

Coast FIRE Number = Target Retirement Portfolio ÷ (1 + real return)^years to retirement

Concretely: if your target retirement portfolio is $3,000,000 at age 65, and you are currently 35, you have 30 years for compound growth. At a 6% real return:

• $3,000,000 ÷ (1.06)^30 = $3,000,000 ÷ 5.74 = $522,600

At 35 years old with $522,600 saved and invested, you could stop contributing entirely and reach $3,000,000 by 65 at a 6% real return. At 40 years old with the same $3,000,000 target and only 25 years, the Coast FIRE number rises to $3,000,000 ÷ (1.06)^25 = $700,000. At 45 with 20 years, it becomes $935,000.

The practical implication for tech workers: if you save aggressively at $200,000–$400,000 income for the first 5–8 years of your career, you may reach Coast FIRE in your early-to-mid 30s for a conventional retirement at 60–65. Everything after that point — every additional contribution, every RSU vest invested — is accelerating the timeline toward full early retirement rather than funding a baseline retirement.

What Tech Workers Actually Do After Reaching Coast FIRE

Coast FIRE is a financial milestone that changes what options exist, not a directive about what to do next. The most common paths for tech workers who hit Coast FIRE:

• Stay in tech, change the relationship. Many Coast FIRE tech workers remain in the industry but stop treating their job as financially critical. They stop chasing promotions for salary, say no to excessive on-call and crunch, take the job at the interesting startup over the FAANG with the better comp, and leave bad managers quickly instead of tolerating them. The job becomes something they choose rather than something they need.
• Downshift to a lower-stress role. Leave the senior staff engineering role and take a mid-level engineering job at a smaller company for $120,000–$180,000 per year. No on-call, better hours, more interesting problems. The income covers expenses; the portfolio compounds untouched. This is effectively Barista FIRE at the engineering level.
• Take an extended sabbatical. Coast FIRE provides the confidence to take 6–18 months off without derailing retirement. If the portfolio is $700,000 and does not need to be touched, a sabbatical is a free option: your future retirement outcome is unchanged while you take the time you needed.
• Move to a lower-cost location. If you reached Coast FIRE in San Francisco earning $350,000 per year but only need $90,000/year to cover expenses in Austin, you can take a remote $120,000/year job that comfortably funds your life while the SF-built portfolio continues compounding.
• Start a business or creative project. Many Coast FIRE tech workers transition to building something of their own — a small software product, a consulting practice, technical writing, or an entirely non-tech creative pursuit. The Coast FIRE portfolio eliminates the survival pressure that makes early entrepreneurship so high-stakes for most people.

Tax Strategy at Coast FIRE

Coast FIRE creates a distinctive tax planning opportunity because you are no longer maximizing contributions — you are managing income for efficiency rather than maximizing savings. The key shifts:

• The contribution calculus changes, but do not stop entirely. Even if you are at Coast FIRE, continuing to max your 401(k) pre-tax contributions ($24,500 in 2026) reduces your current taxable income and accelerates your timeline to full FIRE. If your income has dropped from $350,000 to $120,000, the 401(k) contribution reduces your federal marginal rate from 22% to potentially 12% on a portion of income. The tax savings are smaller but still meaningful.
• Roth conversions become more attractive. If you have shifted from $350,000 FAANG compensation to $120,000 at a lower-stress role, your marginal rate has dropped significantly. This window is ideal for converting traditional IRA funds to Roth — paying 22% federal now rather than potentially 32%–37% later when the portfolio has grown and RMDs are forcing distributions. Each dollar converted now reduces a future RMD.
• Capital gains management in the taxable account. Coast FIRE workers who built large taxable brokerage accounts from RSU proceeds face embedded capital gains. If income is lower now, some of those gains may fall in the 0% or 15% long-term capital gains bracket rather than the 20% bracket they would have hit at peak tech income. Harvesting some gains in lower-income years — selling appreciated positions and immediately repurchasing — resets the basis at a lower tax cost. This is the mirror image of tax-loss harvesting and is often overlooked.
• Self-employment tax if consulting. Coast FIRE workers who move to consulting or freelancing face self-employment tax (15.3% on net self-employment income up to the Social Security wage base). An S-Corp election can reduce this if annual consulting income exceeds $60,000–$80,000. Pay yourself a reasonable salary (subject to payroll tax), take the remainder as distributions (not subject to self-employment tax). The savings can be $5,000–$15,000 per year at consulting income levels of $80,000–$150,000.
• State tax relocation. Coast FIRE is often the trigger for leaving California. If you no longer need Bay Area compensation, there is no financial reason to remain a California resident for the 13.3% state income tax on ordinary income and 9.3%–13.3% on capital gains. Relocating to Texas, Washington (for non-capital-gains income), Florida, or Nevada eliminates state income tax entirely and can save $10,000–$30,000 per year at Coast FIRE income levels.

The Compound Growth That Makes Coast FIRE Powerful

The mathematical leverage in Coast FIRE is compound growth over long time horizons. A portfolio that you leave alone for 20–30 years at 6–7% real return grows to 3–8x its starting value. This means that reaching Coast FIRE at 35 with $600,000 is, in expected value terms, equivalent to having $3,000,000–$4,800,000 in retirement at 65. Every year earlier you hit the Coast FIRE milestone, the compounding multiplier is larger.

For tech workers who are still early in their careers, this creates a powerful insight: the highest-leverage move in early career financial planning is reaching Coast FIRE as fast as possible, because every additional year of compounding without needing contributions multiplies the terminal value. Spending the first 5–8 years of a FAANG career maximally saving and investing — even at the cost of lifestyle enjoyment — and then coasting for the remaining 25–30 working years produces a dramatically better outcome than a steady savings rate over the full 30–35 years.

Coast FIRE vs. Full FIRE: The Tradeoffs

Coast FIRE is not retirement. You still need to work — at least enough to cover current expenses — for potentially many more years. The tradeoffs relative to pushing through to full FIRE:

• Freedom vs. timeline. Coast FIRE gives you freedom from financial pressure now, but you may continue working (in some capacity) for 10–20 more years. Full FIRE gives you freedom from work entirely, but requires more time accumulating before the exit.
• Flexibility vs. certainty. At Coast FIRE, you are relying on compound growth over a long horizon to hit your retirement target. Market volatility, sequence of returns, or life changes can affect the outcome. At full FIRE, the portfolio is already sized to sustain withdrawals — the outcome is less dependent on future market performance.
• Risk of lifestyle inflation. At Coast FIRE, if you stop the aggressive savings discipline, lifestyle expenses can expand to fill the income. A tech worker who downshifts from $350,000 to $150,000 may find their lifestyle drifts upward from the $80,000 target, requiring portfolio withdrawals that disrupt the Coast FIRE math. Discipline in maintaining the spending ceiling matters as much at Coast FIRE as it did during accumulation.

When Coast FIRE Transitions to Full FIRE

Many Coast FIRE workers discover that their lower-stress income continues to generate savings — not because they are trying to, but because their expenses remain below income even at the lower pay level. This "accidental saving" at Coast FIRE accelerates the transition to full FIRE ahead of the original timeline. A Coast FIRE worker earning $120,000 and spending $80,000 saves $40,000/year without trying — equivalent to a 33% savings rate — which shortens the path to full FIRE meaningfully.

The transition to full FIRE typically happens when the portfolio has compounded to the point where the withdrawal rate needed equals or falls below the target withdrawal rate, or when the worker simply chooses to stop. For many Coast FIRE tech workers, the informal transition to full FIRE happens not on a planned date but when they realize they have not touched the portfolio in three years, the balance has grown well past the target, and they simply have no desire to work anymore.