The FIRE Number for High-Cost US Cities (2026): Bay Area, NYC, Seattle & Austin

Every FIRE article eventually gives you the same instruction: multiply your annual spending by 25. It's a fine starting point, and it quietly falls apart the moment you live somewhere expensive.

The problem isn't the multiplier. It's that the national median expense figures those articles use describe a country most FIRE aspirants don't live in. Software engineers, physicians, and dual-income professionals -- the people most likely to be chasing early retirement -- cluster in exactly the metros where housing, taxes, and healthcare behave differently than the average.

This guide builds the number from the ground up for high-cost US cities, and shows you the three levers that move it far more than your savings rate does.

Why "25x Expenses" Misleads in a High-Cost Metro

The 4% rule comes from the Trinity Study, which tested a 30-year retirement using US stock and bond returns. Three things break when you apply it in San Francisco or Manhattan:

• Your horizon is longer than 30 years. Retiring at 45 means planning for 45-50 years, not 30. Most researchers drop to a 3.25-3.5% withdrawal rate for horizons that long -- which raises your target from 25x to roughly 28-31x
• Housing dominates the budget. In a metro where a modest home costs $1.4M, housing isn't a line item -- it's the whole equation. Whether you own outright, carry a mortgage, or rent changes the number by seven figures
• State taxes don't retire when you do. Withdrawals from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs are ordinary income. California taxes them up to 13.3%. Washington and Texas tax them at zero. That difference compounds across decades

The result: two couples with identical spending habits can need FIRE numbers that differ by more than $1 million based purely on where they sit and what they own.

Building the Number: A Component Approach

Instead of guessing a total, build it from components you can actually verify against your own statements. Here's the framework, with illustrative figures for a two-person household. Replace every number with your own -- the structure matters more than the estimates.

1. Core Living Costs (excluding housing)

Groceries, transport, utilities, insurance, entertainment, travel. In most US metros this lands somewhere between $45,000 and $70,000 a year for a couple living comfortably but not extravagantly. This component varies far less between cities than people assume -- a gallon of milk isn't what makes the Bay Area expensive.

2. Housing (the component that actually differs)

Three very different scenarios:

• Own outright: You're left with property tax, insurance, and maintenance. Budget 1.5-2.5% of home value annually. On a $1.4M home that's $21,000-$35,000/year -- and it never fully goes away
• Carrying a mortgage into retirement: Add the full payment until payoff. A $700K balance at 6.5% is roughly $53,000/year in principal and interest. Critically, this expense ends -- so it shouldn't be multiplied by 25. Fund it as a separate finite liability instead
• Renting: The most honest and most brutal input, because it's perpetual and inflation-linked. A $5,500/month family rental in an expensive metro is $66,000/year that grows forever, and it must be multiplied in full -- $1.85M of FIRE number at 28x, from one line item

3. Healthcare Before Medicare

This is the most under-modeled expense in American early retirement. Between your retirement date and age 65, you're buying coverage on the ACA marketplace. Unsubsidized, a couple in their 50s can face roughly $1,800-$2,500/month in premiums -- that's $21,600-$30,000/year in premiums alone, before a deductible that commonly runs $3,000-$8,000 per person. Budget $25,000-$38,000/year all-in for an unsubsidised couple.

But here's the part that changes the math: ACA subsidies are based on modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), not net worth. An early retiree with $2.5M in assets who draws modest, well-structured income can qualify for substantial premium credits. A retiree who realizes large capital gains or does aggressive Roth conversions in the same year may not.

This means your withdrawal sequencing is worth real money every single year before 65 -- often more than an extra 0.5% of investment return.

4. The Tax Layer

Model taxes as a component, not an afterthought. Your effective rate depends on the mix of accounts you draw from:

• Taxable brokerage: Long-term capital gains, taxed at 0%/15%/20% federally. The 0% bracket for married filers is genuinely large -- many early retirees pay near-zero federal tax on six-figure withdrawals
• Traditional 401(k)/IRA: Ordinary income rates, plus state tax
• Roth: Tax-free, and critically, doesn't count toward ACA MAGI

A retiree with all three account types has a lever a retiree with only a traditional 401(k) simply doesn't have.

City by City: Where the Differences Actually Come From

San Francisco Bay Area

The highest housing costs in the country combined with California's 13.3% top marginal income tax rate. What softens it: Proposition 13 caps property tax increases at 2% a year, so long-tenured owners pay tax on a basis far below market value. A couple who bought in 2012 may have a property tax bill half that of an identical neighbor who bought last year.

The Bay Area lever: if you own with a low Prop 13 basis, your number is dramatically lower than the headline cost of living suggests. If you rent, it's dramatically higher.

New York City

New York layers a city income tax on top of state tax -- up to roughly 3.9% additional. Housing costs rival the Bay Area, but transport costs are meaningfully lower for households that go car-free, often saving $8,000-$12,000/year versus a two-car suburban household.

The NYC lever: moving outside the five boroughs eliminates the city income tax entirely while keeping state tax -- a common and legitimate early-retirement move.

Seattle

The structural winner among expensive metros: no state income tax. Housing is expensive, but every dollar withdrawn from a traditional 401(k) escapes state taxation.

It's worth being precise about how much that's actually worth, because the figure is routinely exaggerated. Using California's 2026 married-filing-jointly brackets (1% to $22,158, then 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, reaching 9.3% above $145,448) and the $11,412 standard deduction, here's what a California retiree actually pays -- and therefore what a Seattle retiree saves:

Annual withdrawal	California tax	Effective rate	Worth at 28x
$80,000	$1,471	1.8%	$41,000
$120,000	$3,585	3.0%	$100,000
$160,000	$6,696	4.2%	$187,000
$200,000	$10,416	5.2%	$292,000

California's progressive structure means a modest early retirement barely feels it -- roughly $3,600/year at a $120,000 draw, worth about $100,000 of FIRE number. The "$300,000 tax advantage" you'll see quoted only materialises at Fat FIRE spending levels around $200,000/year.

The bigger California penalty isn't the rate -- it's the treatment. California makes no distinction between short-term and long-term capital gains; both are taxed as ordinary income at up to 13.3%. A retiree living off realised long-term gains can pay 0% federal tax inside the married 0% bracket while still owing California its full ordinary-income rate on the same dollars. That asymmetry, not the headline rate, is what makes California expensive for people who fund retirement by selling appreciated assets.

The Seattle asterisk most guides omit: Washington does levy a 7% tax on long-term capital gains above roughly $262,000 in a year, with an additional surcharge on very large gains. Retirement accounts, real estate, and gains below the threshold are exempt -- so it never touches a typical $120,000 withdrawal plan. It matters enormously in one specific case: selling a large concentrated stock position to fund early retirement. If you're sitting on heavily appreciated RSUs, spreading the sale across multiple tax years is worth real money in Washington in a way it isn't in Texas or Florida.

Austin

Also no state income tax, but Texas recovers it through property tax -- effective rates of 1.6-2.2% are common, with no Prop 13-style cap. A $700K home can carry a $13,000/year tax bill that rises with assessed value.

The Austin trade: excellent for retirees drawing large ordinary income from modest homes. Much weaker for retirees in expensive houses drawing little taxable income.

Single vs. Couple: Not Simply Double

One of the most common questions is whether a couple needs twice a single person's number. They don't -- and the gap is bigger than most people expect.

• Housing barely changes. One mortgage, one property tax bill, one insurance policy. This is the single largest source of the discount
• Tax brackets roughly double for married filers. A couple can realize substantially more long-term capital gains inside the 0% federal bracket than a single filer
• Healthcare fully doubles. Two ACA policies, two deductibles, two out-of-pocket maximums. No discount here
• Food, travel, and discretionary spending scale at roughly 1.5-1.7x, not 2x

In practice, a couple typically needs about 1.5-1.7x a comparable single person's number in the same city -- not 2x. The offsetting risk is that a couple must fund two lifespans, which argues for the more conservative end of the withdrawal-rate range.

If you're running the numbers as a couple, our complete guide to calculating a couple's FIRE number goes deeper on survivor scenarios, Social Security timing, and mismatched retirement ages. For households where only one partner earns, single-income FIRE strategy covers the specific tradeoffs.

The Geoarbitrage Question

The most powerful lever available to a high-cost-metro FIRE aspirant isn't a higher savings rate. It's the decision of where to spend retirement.

Consider a couple targeting $110,000/year of spending in the Bay Area. At 28x, that's roughly $3.1M. The same lifestyle in a mid-cost metro -- Raleigh, Boise, Pittsburgh, or Kansas City -- might cost $75,000/year, putting the target near $2.1M.

That $1M difference is not a small optimization. For a household saving $100,000 a year, it's roughly a decade of working life.

Three things worth weighing honestly before treating relocation as a plan:

• Selling into a high-cost market funds the move. Home equity built in an expensive metro converts directly into the new, lower number -- often the single biggest transfer in the whole plan
• You may not want to leave. Family, medical specialists, community, and climate are real. A plan you won't execute isn't a plan
• You can retire in place and relocate later. Many households retire in their expensive metro, then move in their 60s or 70s when ties loosen. Modeling this as a two-phase plan is more realistic than a single flat number

Putting It Together: A Worked Example

A couple, both 44, planning to retire at 48 in Seattle, owning a home with $250K remaining on the mortgage:

Component	Annual	Multiplied at 28x
Core living costs	$58,000	$1,624,000
Housing (tax, insurance, maintenance)	$18,000	$504,000
Healthcare, ages 48-65 (subsidy-managed)	$14,000	funded separately: ~$238,000
Federal taxes (structured withdrawals)	$6,000	$168,000
State income tax (Washington)	$0	$0
Mortgage payoff (finite liability)	--	$250,000

Approximate target: $2.78M -- with the healthcare bridge and mortgage treated as finite obligations rather than perpetual expenses, which is what keeps the number from being needlessly inflated.

Run the same household in California, drawing roughly $96,000/year, and the state tax line adds about $2,145/year -- roughly $60,000 of FIRE number. Run it renting at $5,500/month instead of owning and the target rises past $4.3M. That contrast is the whole point: the tax code is a rounding error next to the housing decision.

The Three Levers That Actually Matter

If you take one thing away: in a high-cost US metro, your FIRE number is dominated by three decisions, not by your investment returns.

1. Housing status at retirement -- owned outright, mortgaged, or rented. Worth seven figures
2. State tax regime -- where you'll actually be drawing income. Worth roughly $300,000
3. Healthcare bridge strategy -- how you manage MAGI between retirement and 65. Worth $10,000-$20,000 a year for nearly two decades

Savings rate determines how fast you get there. These three determine where "there" actually is.

Tracking It Without a Spreadsheet

The reason most people's FIRE number is stale is that it's trapped in a spreadsheet built on a Sunday afternoon eighteen months ago. Meanwhile the portfolio moved, the mortgage balance dropped, and home equity changed.

Agni Folio's free FIRE calculator models your target from your actual tracked assets -- including real estate equity and liabilities, which most calculators ignore entirely -- and recalculates as your holdings change. You can model Lean, Regular, and Fat scenarios, and see a days-to-financial-freedom countdown rather than a static figure.

If you hold assets across more than one country or currency -- common for tech workers on visas, returning expats, and anyone with foreign equity compensation -- it converts everything into a single base currency with daily rates, so the number reflects your whole balance sheet rather than just your US brokerage account.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the FIRE number for a couple in the Bay Area?

For a couple owning their home outright and spending around $110,000/year, roughly $3.1M using a 3.5% withdrawal rate ($110,000 / 0.035 = $3,142,857). Renting at $5,500/month instead of owning replaces about $25,000 of ownership costs with $66,000 of rent, lifting spending to roughly $151,000/year and the target to about $4.3M. A low Proposition 13 property-tax basis can reduce the owner figure by $150,000-$250,000.

Is the 4% rule safe for early retirement in an expensive city?

For a 45-50 year horizon, most analyses favor 3.25-3.5% rather than 4%. The city itself doesn't change the safe rate -- but high-cost metros correlate with earlier retirement ages and therefore longer horizons, which is what drives the lower rate.

Does a couple need double a single person's FIRE number?

No. Because housing costs barely change and married tax brackets are roughly double, couples typically need about 1.5-1.7x a comparable single person's number. Healthcare is the main expense that fully doubles.

How much does state income tax change my FIRE number?

Less than most articles claim at typical FIRE spending, and more at Fat FIRE levels. Using California's 2026 married-filing-jointly brackets, a couple drawing $120,000/year pays about $3,585 in state tax -- roughly $100,000 of FIRE number at 28x. At a $200,000 draw it rises to about $10,400/year, or $292,000. The larger California effect is structural: it taxes long-term capital gains as ordinary income, so retirees living off appreciated assets can owe California while paying 0% federally. Note too that Washington taxes long-term capital gains above roughly $262,000/year at 7% (retirement accounts and real estate exempt), so Texas, Florida, and Nevada are cleaner if you plan to sell a large concentrated position.

Should I include my home equity in my FIRE number?

Only if you intend to access it -- by downsizing, relocating, or a reverse mortgage. A home you plan to live in until death produces no withdrawable income, so it shouldn't offset your target. It does reduce the target by eliminating rent, which is where its real value shows up.

This article is educational and is not financial, tax, or investment advice. Tax rules, ACA subsidy structures, and withdrawal-rate research change over time; consult a qualified professional about your own circumstances.