Thinking tools, not truth.
Nineteen tools I built to think about freedom the way I actually do: what the life costs, how far away the exit is, what each euro costs and what one ordinary week might contain. Plus the three calculators I reach for when you outgrow mine. Use them to think, not to decide.
Nineteen tools, six stations. Stand where you are:
Open the full mapStart from zero.
The tools will make far more sense after the ten-lesson path.
Built for each step of the exit.
The first question is never how much money. It's what life, and what that life costs.
Price the LifeStart here
The right first question isn’t “how much?” It’s “what life do I want, and what does it cost?” Build your number from the bottom up.
Your number
Buy or Rent?
Put the same home on both sides. Follow the mortgage, rent, invested difference and eventual sale month by month, with European costs and a FIRE view.
The break-even year, the wealth gap, and what each choice does to your exit.
The Freedom Price Tag
What a purchase really costs: not the price in the shop, but the savings needed to fund it forever, and the work time those savings take to build.
The true cost, in your time
The Geoarbitrage Map
The same life costs wildly different amounts by country. See how much further, or less far, your money would go.
Your life, priced by country
The Old Number
The life you priced a few years ago doesn’t cost that anymore. Pick the country and the year, and see the same life in today’s money: the number, the 30× target, and what any cash quietly lost on the way.
The same life, in today’s money
Your number and your date: how far the exit is, and which kind of exit it is.
The Exit CalculatorStart here
How many years until you can stop working, plus the earlier point where your savings will finish the job on their own, even if you stop adding.
Years to exit, and the coast point
What Kind of FIRE?
Coast, barista, lean, full, fat: the five kinds of FIRE, with your own number and date for each.
Number and date, five kinds of FIRE
The Pension Bridge
Retire early and the pot has two jobs: carry the years before any pension alone, then cover whatever the pension doesn’t. Enter your exit, your spend and the pension you’re promised, and see the bridge, the smaller number after, and how much of the plan that far-off promise honestly carries.
Your number, with the pension counted
The Six Roads
Working full pace until the number lands is one road out, and it has a price like the others: the years it takes. Four days, a real break, work that covers the life, another country, stopping today. Each road priced on your numbers: a date for the five that have one, and for the last, the income the pot already pays and how long it lasts.
Six roads, priced side by side
The machinery, kept boring: a broker you trust, one cheap fund, buying on automatic.
The fund, the broker, the structure, the border: what the machinery quietly charges, priced.
The Broker BillStart here
Free apps, €1 trades, custody percentages: every broker charges somewhere. Give it your monthly buy and your pot, and see the real yearly bill at each of the main European brokers.
The yearly bill, broker by broker
The Fee Drag
What fund fees and dividend tax cost you over decades, in euros, including a question only Europeans face: accumulating or distributing funds.
What the fee eats, in euros
The Domicile Tax
The withholding tax inside your fund, priced: the same pot in an Irish, a Luxembourg or a swap-based fund, and what the gap costs in euros and time.
The withholding gap, in euros
Where You Live
Some countries tax the pot every year, just for existing. See what that does to the number you need: over a decades-long exit, the difference is enormous.
What a wealth tax adds to the number
Before you jump: what bad decades and a long life do to the plan.
The Three EndingsStart here
Alive and funded, alive and broke, or dead: the honest odds of each, at every age from here to 105.
The odds: funded, broke or gone, by age
The Exit Rehearsal
Plan one ordinary work-free week, live it, then compare the two without a score.
One ordinary week, compared
The First Bad Decade
Two identical futures in a different order: why the first ten years, not the average, decide whether the money lasts.
Same average, different order
The Spare Key
The plan is sealed; the first years are not. Price the fallback you would actually use if they bite: spend less for a while, earn for a while, leave later, count less of the later income. Choose one and a backup, write the condition in your own words, and seal a dated card. Nothing ranked, nothing forecast.
One fallback, priced and sealed
Paying for the days, then filling them: the manual for living off it, and the part no calculator solves.
The heavy machinery.
Mine keep it simple on purpose. When you need more (historical backtests, withdrawal strategies, Monte Carlo), these are the three I actually use. Each does something mine deliberately don’t.
FI Calcficalc.app ↗
More detailed simulations: historical backtesting and different withdrawal strategies.
Does what mine don’t: How your plan would have survived real history, not a steady average.
cFIREsimcfiresim.com ↗
The classic historical simulator. Stress-tests stock, bond and cash mixes and withdrawal rates against history.
Does what mine don’t: Sequence-of-returns risk: the order returns arrive in, which mine ignores.
Portfolio Visualizerportfoliovisualizer.com ↗
The advanced end: portfolio backtesting, asset allocation and Monte Carlo runs.
Does what mine don’t: Thousands of randomised futures, and how a specific mix behaves.
Nothing here is financial, investment, medical or retirement advice: it’s arithmetic and education. The calculators use the numbers you enter, The Exit Rehearsal compares your own Plan and Reality without interpreting either, and The Spare Key prices the fallback you enter without recommending one. Some tools remember work in the browser, some can place a scenario in the page address, and the Rehearsal and the Spare Key stay in this browser unless you print them, download them, or keep them in your account. Each tool tells you what it keeps and where. Decisions about your money are yours, ideally with a licensed adviser. I’m happily not one.
The number answers when. The week is yours to write.
Use the map to find the financial tool you need, then take the life-side question into The Exit Rehearsal. If the decision needs personal judgement, the Exit Audit is where we begin.