FIRE Calculator Germany

What FIRE means in Germany

FIRE stands for financial independence, retire early. The mechanic is the same everywhere: build a pot large enough that a safe withdrawal covers your spending, so paid work becomes optional. What changes is the plumbing, and Germany's is different enough that an American calculator will hand you a badly wrong answer.

Two German facts move the number more than anything else. The first is the gesetzliche Rentenversicherung, the statutory pension. Section 35 SGB VI sets the Regelaltersgrenze at the completion of age 67, reached after a general Wartezeit of five years. That 67 is the end point of a long phase-in from 65 that has been running since 2012 under section 235 SGB VI, rising in monthly steps by birth year: someone born in 1961 reaches their Regelaltersgrenze at 66 years and 6 months, and the full 67 applies from the 1964 cohort onwards. If you are young enough to be reading a FIRE page, 67 is your number.

The second is that Germany gives you no tax-free investing wrapper outside a pension, and it taxes the growth of your funds before you ever sell them. That single rule, the Vorabpauschale, is the reason German FIRE maths does not travel.

Your statutory pension is not a flat amount. You collect Entgeltpunkte, one point for a year of earnings equal to the national average, which for 2026 is provisionally €51,944. From 1 July 2026 each point is worth €42.52 a month, after a 4.24% uprating. Forty-five points, the benchmark career the system calls the Standardrente, produce €1,913.40 a month gross. Contributions run at 18.6% of pay for 2026, unchanged for the ninth year, split equally so you and your employer each pay 9.3%, and only earnings up to the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze of €8,450 a month count.

This is where early retirement bites. Stop working at 52 and you stop collecting points at 52. A FIRE retiree who worked from 25 to 52 at roughly average pay lands nearer 25 points than 45, which at €42.52 is about €1,063 a month, or €12,756 a year. That is the default this page uses, and it is deliberately not the Standardrente. Check your own Renteninformation before you trust any figure here.

The German account stack, and how it constrains early retirement

German FIRE is really a two-layer problem: getting money in without losing a third of the growth to tax, then getting at it before any pension unlocks.

There is no ISA and no equivalent. Ordinary brokerage money is taxed at a flat 25% under section 32d(1) EStG, plus a solidarity surcharge of 5.5% of that tax under section 4 SolZG, which lands you at 26.375% before any church tax. The partial abolition of the Soli for wage and income tax did not reach investors: the exemption thresholds in section 3 SolZG apply to assessed income tax and wage tax, not to Kapitalertragsteuer. Against that you get the Sparer-Pauschbetrag under section 20(9) EStG, which is €1,000 a year, or €2,000 for jointly assessed spouses. On a portfolio of any real size, that allowance is a rounding error.

Pensions shelter growth but lock the door. A Basisrente, often called a Rürup contract, has to be structured as a lifelong monthly annuity that cannot start before you complete age 62 for contracts signed after 31 December 2011. There is no lump sum and no early access. The statutory pension can be brought forward, but only through the Altersrente für langjährig Versicherte, which section 36 SGB VI allows from age 63 provided you have completed a Wartezeit of 35 years. Each month you draw early costs 0.3% of the pension, capped at 14.4% across the full 48 months, and the cut is permanent. The pension for besonders langjährig Versicherte needs 45 years and cannot be brought forward at all, even with reductions.

So if you want to stop at 50, nothing in the sheltered layer helps you for at least twelve years. Every euro of spending before 62 has to come from a taxable account. That is the same bridge problem described in what is Coast FIRE, only with a longer bridge and a tax on the bridge.

The Vorabpauschale, the tax that arrives before you sell

This is the piece that catches people who copy a US or UK plan. Under section 18 InvStG, a fund that accumulates rather than distributes still generates a taxable amount each year. The Basisertrag is the redemption price of your units at the start of the calendar year multiplied by 70% of the Basiszins, and it is capped at the actual increase in value over the year plus any distributions, so a losing year produces nothing. The Basiszins is set annually by the Bundesministerium der Finanzen from Bundesbank yield curve data. For 2026 it was fixed at 3.20% as at 2 January 2026, and it is reset every January, so the drag is not a constant.

Work it through. Seventy per cent of 3.20% is 2.24% of your January value. For an equity fund, section 20 InvStG grants a Teilfreistellung of 30% for units held in private assets, so only 70% of that is taxable, which is 1.568% of the fund value. Tax it at 26.375% and you are paying roughly 0.41% of your portfolio value every January, in cash, on money you have not touched. The Vorabpauschale for 2026 is deemed received on the first working day of 2027, and your broker withholds it automatically.

On a €400,000 accumulating equity ETF that is a Basisertrag of €8,960, a taxable figure of €6,272 after the Teilfreistellung, €5,272 after the Sparer-Pauschbetrag, and a bill of about €1,390. It is credited against tax due when you eventually sell, so it is a timing penalty rather than double taxation, but timing is exactly what compounding is made of. Over a twenty-five year accumulation you hand over that drag twenty-five times.

A worked example in euro

Take Lukas, 34, who spends €40,000 a year and wants to stop working at 52. Using this page's defaults of a 7% return, 3% inflation and no fees, which is a 4% real return, and a 4% withdrawal rate:

• Ignore the statutory pension entirely and his target is €40,000 ÷ 4%, which is €1,000,000.
• Count a reduced entitlement of €12,756 a year from 67 and the shape changes. From 52 to 67 he needs fifteen bridge years of full spending, worth about €445,000 in today's money. From 67 onwards he only funds €40,000 minus €12,756, which is €27,244 a year, needing about €681,000 at 67, or roughly €378,000 discounted back to 52.
• His target at 52 is therefore around €823,000, about €177,000 less than the naive figure.

The split matters as much as the total. Almost all of that €823,000 has to be reachable before 62, which means it sits in a taxable account paying the Vorabpauschale every year. Add roughly 0.41% of annual drag and a 4% real return quietly becomes closer to 3.6%, which is why the honest German answer is usually a slightly later date than the arithmetic first suggests. Test it by nudging the fees slider to 0.4% and watching the number move.

Local risks worth pricing in

Policy risk on the pension. The Regelaltersgrenze has already moved once, from 65 to 67, over a phase-in running from 2012 to the 1964 birth cohort. Nothing beyond 67 is in law today, but a further rise is openly debated, and fifteen years of assumed stability is a lot to assume. Sensitivity-test by setting the start age to 68 or 70.

Entgeltpunkte risk. Your pension is only as good as your points. Career breaks, years abroad, part-time work and self-employment outside the system all cut the total, and stopping at 52 caps it hard. Read your Renteninformation and enter the real number.

Health cover risk. The figures on this page are gross. Statutory health and long-term care contributions come out of a German pension, so the amount that actually reaches your spending is lower than the headline.

Tax-drag risk. The Basiszins is set fresh by the Bundesfinanzministerium every January from Bundesbank yield curve data, so the annual bite on your accumulating funds is not a constant you can model once and forget.

Cost risk. A Munich retirement budget and a Saxon one differ easily by €10,000 a year, and at a 4% rate that gap is €250,000 of FIRE number.

Honest limitations

This is a planning model, not advice, and it simplifies deliberately. It works in real terms, so every figure is in today's euro, and it assumes a constant real return rather than an actual sequence of good and bad years, so it ignores sequence-of-returns risk. It applies a flat withdrawal rate rather than modelling German income tax, the Vorabpauschale, Abgeltungsteuer on disposal, or health and care contributions on pension income, so a taxable-heavy portfolio will need more than the figure shown. It assumes your statutory pension entitlement stays at the amount you type, in today's money. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

Every German figure on this page comes from the primary sources below, so you can verify them directly rather than take our word for it.

• Section 35 SGB VI, Regelaltersrente, the Regelaltersgrenze at the completion of age 67 and the general Wartezeit.
• Section 235 SGB VI, Regelaltersrente transitional table, the phased rise from 65 by birth cohort.
• Section 50 SGB VI, Wartezeiten, five years for the Regelaltersrente, 35 years for langjährig Versicherte and 45 years for besonders langjährig Versicherte.
• Section 36 SGB VI, Altersrente für langjährig Versicherte, claimable from the completion of age 63 with a 35 year Wartezeit.
• Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Altersrente für langjährig Versicherte, the reduction of 0.3% per month of early drawing, capped at 14.4%, and the rule that the 45 year pension cannot be brought forward.
• Bekanntmachung der Beitragssätze 2026 (BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 291), the contribution rate of 18.6% in the allgemeine Rentenversicherung for 2026.
• Deutsche Rentenversicherung, changes from 1 January 2026, the equal split of the 18.6% between employer and employee and the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze of €8,450 a month.
• Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Rentenanpassung 2026, the 4.24% increase from 1 July 2026 and the aktueller Rentenwert rising from €40.79 to €42.52.
• Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Entgeltpunkte, one point for earnings equal to the average, provisionally €51,944 for 2026.
• Section 32d EStG, income tax on investment income at 25%.
• Section 20(9) EStG, the Sparer-Pauschbetrag of €1,000, or €2,000 for jointly assessed spouses.
• Section 4 SolZG 1995, the solidarity surcharge of 5.5% of the assessment base.
• Section 3 SolZG 1995, the exemption thresholds that apply to assessed income tax and wage tax but not to Kapitalertragsteuer.
• Section 18 InvStG, Vorabpauschale, the Basisertrag at 70% of the Basiszins, the cap at the year's rise in value, and deemed receipt on the first working day of the following year.
• Section 20 InvStG, Teilfreistellung, 30% exemption for equity fund units held in private assets.
• BMF letter of 13 January 2026 (IV C 1 - S 1980/00230/012/001), the Basiszins of 3.20% as at 2 January 2026 for the 2026 Vorabpauschale.
• Section 10(1) no. 2(b) EStG, the Basisrente condition of a lifelong monthly annuity not starting before the completion of age 62.