Are you Chubby FIRE — and what's your number?

Chubby FIRE is the comfortable middle of the FIRE spectrum — financial independence with room to breathe, but short of luxury. It sits between Lean FIRE (full independence on a frugal budget) and Fat FIRE (independence with no spending constraints). In practice it means a household spending roughly $80,000 to $150,000 a year, backed by a portfolio of about $2M to $4M.

The confusing part is that nobody agrees on the band. You'll find Chubby defined as $60k–$100k of spending in one place and $100k–$200k in another; net-worth targets range from $1.5M to $5M. That ambiguity is exactly why the calculator above leads with a clear answer: type your spending, and it resolves both questions at once — are you Chubby, and what's your number?

FIRE isn't one finish line — it's a spectrum of how much you spend in retirement, and therefore how big a portfolio you need. Chubby is the friendly middle: more than a lean, bare-bones budget, but well short of the fat, no-limits version.

Including the regular-FIRE row matters — Chubby is what you get when an ordinary FIRE budget grows into a genuinely comfortable one. The biggest comparison, Chubby vs Fat, is below.

There's only one formula, and it's the same 25× rule behind every flavor of FIRE — your annual spending divided by a safe withdrawal rate:

To get the date, project what you have invested forward at your expected return, adding your annual contribution each year, until the balance reaches that number:

At a 4% withdrawal rate, a Chubby budget lands between $2M and $3.75M ($80k–$150k of spending × 25). Want a longer safety margin? A 3.5% rate — the long-horizon convention for someone retiring in their 40s or 50s with a 40+ year runway — lifts the same band to roughly $2.3M–$4.3M (× 28.6). The toggle on the calculator switches between the two live.

Single vs. couple. The number is driven by spending, not headcount — so a couple spending $120k together needs the same $3M as a solo spender at $120k. Couples often land in Chubby naturally: two people sharing housing and overhead spend less per person, but their combined comfortable budget pushes the household into the $80k–$150k range. Two incomes also tend to reach the number years sooner.

This is the comparison that actually keeps people up at night, because it's the one with real lifestyle stakes. Chubby FIRE is a comfortable-but-considered life: nice travel, a paid-off house, no anxiety about a restaurant bill — but you still notice a $40k splurge. Fat FIRE removes the last constraint: first-class everything, a second home, giving at scale — and a number to match, typically $5M and up.

The gap is enormous in time, not just dollars. Moving your target spending from $120k to $200k roughly doubles the wait on the same savings — which is why most people who think they want Fat FIRE discover Chubby buys back the years that matter.

It fits people who want a genuinely comfortable retirement without chasing the biggest possible number — high earners and diligent savers who could push toward Fat FIRE but would rather reclaim a decade of their life. It's the pragmatic target for a dual-income household that lives well but not lavishly.

It's a weaker fit if your spending genuinely requires a Fat budget (don't under-target your real life), or if a Lean approach would get you free years sooner and you'd happily live on less. And the standard caveat applies harder the earlier you retire: sequence-of-returns risk — a market crash in your first few retired years does outsized damage — which is exactly why a 3.5% rate, or a cash buffer, is worth considering for a long Chubby runway.