I got mass anxiety about my financial plan for years. You know that feeling—spreadsheets that output a different retirement age depending on which assumptions you feed them, feeling behind some imaginary timeline.

Then I discovered Coast FIRE and it genuinely changed how I think about money.

The concept: there's a point where you've saved enough that compound interest alone will get you to your retirement number—even if you never contribute another dollar. Once you hit that number, you can downshift to lower-paying work you actually enjoy, take risks on a startup, or just stop white-knuckling every paycheck.

I couldn't find a calculator that let me actually play with the variables the way I wanted, so I built one:

https://practicalwebtools.com/finance/coast-fire-calculator

It runs entirely in-browser (no data sent anywhere—you can check the network tab). Wanted something I'd actually trust with real numbers.