Coast FIRE for Nurses and Healthcare Workers: Your Number by Age

• Number by age
• How fast
• Calculator
• What coasting looks like

Coast FIRE in plain terms

Full financial independence (FIRE) means your investments can cover your spending for good, usually 25 times what you spend in a year. Coast FIRE is the milestone before that: your retirement at 65 is already funded, because the money you have will keep compounding on its own.

You still need a paycheck to cover today’s spending. What changes is that the paycheck no longer has to fund your retirement too. For a lot of people in healthcare, that’s the difference between working three 12s plus overtime and working two.

Your Coast number by age

Here’s the balance you’d need today to reach each target by 65 with no more saving. The targets match the example budgets on how much to invest to retire early: about $60,000 a year for a nurse, $80,000 for an NP, PA or pharmacist, $100,000 for a dentist and $120,000 for a CRNA.

Target ÷ 1.05 to the power of (65 minus your age). A 5% return after inflation, today’s dollars, before taxes and fees. Social Security not included.

What changes the Coast number most

• The return. For a $2 million target at 40, the Coast number is about $750,000 at 4% after inflation, $591,000 at 5% and $466,000 at 6%.
• The finish line. Coasting to 60 instead of 65 raises that same number to about $754,000. Coasting to 67 lowers it to about $536,000.

When you’ll reach it

Starting at 30 with nothing saved and a 5% return after inflation, here’s when you’d reach Coast FIRE and when you’d reach the full number at the same pace.

The age you’ll be when you reach it, the same way the calculators show it. Monthly investing includes any employer match, invested at the end of each month.

Coast FIRE: stop adding and still get there by 65

Two people invest $2,500 a month from 30 toward $1.5 million

• Keeps investing
• Stops at Coast FIRE, age 42

Show the numbers

Age	Keep investing $2,500 a month	Stop at Coast FIRE
30	$0	$0
35	$169,534	$169,534
40	$385,908	$385,908
45	$662,061	$565,338
50	$1,014,511	$721,531
55	$1,464,336	$920,876
60	reached $1.5M	$1,175,298
65	reached $1.5M	$1,500,011

Starting at 30 with $0, 5% a year after inflation, invested at the end of each month, today's dollars. Keeps investing: passes $1.5 million at about 55. Stops at Coast FIRE: invests until about 42 (a balance of about $488,000), then adds nothing and reaches $1.5 million at 65.

The pattern holds across jobs: Coast FIRE shows up about 11 to 13 years before full financial independence. That’s a long stretch where the job no longer has to carry your retirement, only your current life.

Coast FIRE calculator

Enter your own numbers. The calculator shows your Coast number today, whether you’ve reached it, and the age you’d reach it at your current monthly investing. For a full timeline with your spending and goal age, use the FIRE number calculator.

What coasting looks like in healthcare

Few fields make cutting back as normal as healthcare does. Once you’re past your Coast number, you have options most office jobs don’t:

• Fewer shifts. Drop from three 12s to two, or stop picking up overtime.
• PRN or per diem. Work when you choose, often at a higher hourly rate, usually without benefits.
• A gentler role. Leave nights or the ICU for clinic days, education, case management or telehealth.
• A different kind of work. Teach, precept, volunteer or start something small, as long as it covers your bills.

The catch is that the paycheck still has to cover everything you spend, plus taxes. A nurse spending $60,000 a year as a single filer with no state income tax needs about $73,000 of pay to take home $60,000, roughly three-quarters of the median RN’s $97,550. Two 12s a week at the median rate, 0.6 of a full-time schedule, would bring home about $49,000.

Check these before you cut back

• Health insurance. Many hospitals tie benefits to a minimum number of scheduled hours, and PRN roles usually have none. Find your employer’s cutoff before you change your schedule, and price your own coverage until Medicare at 65.
• Loan forgiveness. Public Service Loan Forgiveness requires full-time work, an average of 30 hours a week, though you can add up hours across qualifying jobs. Two 12s is 24 hours, which stops the clock.
• Disability coverage. Group long-term disability usually pays a percentage of your current pay, so cutting hours shrinks it. Your income still has to carry you to 65, so check what coverage you’d keep.
• Social Security. Your benefit is based on your 35 highest-earning years, so part-time years can lower it.

My take: the best version of Coast FIRE for most people in healthcare isn’t stopping all saving. It’s keeping at least your employer match going and taking the rest of the win as time. A little new money also protects you if the market has a bad few years right after you hit your number.

Which accounts to count

Count invested money meant for retirement: your 403(b) or 401(k), a 457(b), IRAs, an HSA you’ve invested and a brokerage account. Leave out your home, your car and your emergency fund.

If a private nonprofit hospital offers you a 457(b), count it, but know it stays the hospital’s property until it’s paid out. How the two kinds of 457(b) differ.

Social Security and pensions aren’t in the tables. Both lower what your portfolio has to cover. If Social Security will pay $20,000 of a $60,000 budget, your target drops from $1.5 million to $1 million, and the Coast number at 40 drops from about $443,000 to $295,000. If you were born in 1960 or later, your full Social Security age is 67, and you can claim from 62 at a lower amount. You can see your own estimate by signing in at ssa.gov.

FAQ

I’m an emergency physician, not a financial advisor, CPA or attorney. This is education, not personalized advice. Tax law and benefit rules change, and your situation is different from the examples here. Talk to a professional before acting on anything you read.