- Dexter Zhuang achieved Coast FIRE, meaning he doesn’t have to continue saving for retirement.
- He determined his ‘number’ using an online calculator that considers things like age and spending.
- Zhuang used conservative estimates for future expenses and is planning for potential family costs.
Dexter Zhuang doesn’t have his eyes set on early retirement. But he likes the peace of mind and career flexibility that comes with financial independence.
That’s why “Cosat FIRE,” an offshoot of the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement, appealed to him.
Achieving Coast FIRE means you don’t have to continue contributing to your retirement accounts — the current amount will grow and compound enough over time to support your retirement goals, allowing you to “coast” into your golden years.
“Coast FIRE is a place where I get more flexibility, but it doesn’t mean that I can stop working because I still need to cover my expenses on a day-to-day basis,” Zhuang, who quit the corporate world and ultimately took a pay cut to work for himself, told Business Insider. “For me, that’s fine. It’s motivating, and I can still work on something that I enjoy to pay for those expenses. Anything that’s extra, I can continue to invest into retirement or for saving for a family or whatever other saving goals I have.”
Calculating his Coast FIRE number
Zhuang determined his Coast FIRE number using an online calculator from WalletBurst. The calculator considers your current age, retirement age, annual spending in retirement, and other factors.
When he first used the calculator in 2023, he was 31 and assumed he’d work well into his 60s.
“I don’t see myself as someone who wants to retire early and stop working. The retirement age that I put into the Coast FIRE calculator is 67,” said Zhuang, who does freelance consulting for startup CEOs and runs a newsletter called Money Abroad.
As for retirement expenses, he assumed he’d spend $60,000 a year — or, $5,000 a month.
“I used our annual spend while we were living in Singapore as the basis,” said Zhuang, who moved to Southeast Asia in 2020 after starting his career in the Bay Area. He doesn’t consider Singapore an inexpensive city, though it was cheaper than San Francisco, where his average monthly expenses came out to about $6,500.
“When I moved from San Francisco to Singapore, I ended up with a higher take-home pay due to that lower cost of living,” he said, noting that taxes were also “lower for me in Singapore than in San Francisco, in terms of my effective tax rate.”
Zhuang says that his average spending has decreased to about $3,500 since moving to Mexico City with his wife in 2024. Still, he prefers to be conservative with his Coast FIRE calculations and is assuming he’ll spend $5,000 a month in retirement.
The calculator asks for an annualized investment growth rate. Zhuang, who has 65% of his portfolio invested in stock funds like VTSAX and VOO, assumed 7%. It also asks for an inflation rate — Zhuang used 3% — and a safe withdrawal rate, which he set at 4%.
The last two inputs are your current invested assets and monthly contribution.
Zhuang prefers not to share his exact net worth but said that he earned an average income of $133,000 between 2013 and 2022 and was saving roughly 35% of his income. BI confirmed that he hit his six-figure Coast FIRE number by looking at screenshots of his savings and investment accounts.
Here’s an example of what someone in their early 30s expecting to work into their mid-60s may need to save to hit Coast FIRE, using the WalletBurst calculator:
Planning for a more expensive future
Zhuang recognizes that his expenses may change in the future, especially if he and his wife start a family.
“I had achieved the number based on my current spending,” he said. “We would like to have a family so, of course, those numbers may change. This is really a number that applies to my current situation versus the family situation. But it does give me more flexibility now.”
He’s actively saving for kids and other future costs. He keeps about 15% of his portfolio in cash — he prefers high-yield savings accounts and four-week US treasury bills — and those savings do not count as retirement money. He also has a small percentage of his portfolio invested in startups, which he also excludes from his retirement calculation.
“I think about it as safely Coast FIRE-ing,” he said.
While he plans to continue growing his newsletter and freelance consulting business, that could also change and lead him to pursue early retirement.
“Maybe I’ll hate work at some point,” he said. “But for now, I see myself as enjoying it.”
