Your savings rate is the only lever

Income is the wrong number to chase

Two indie devs, same year. Dev A clears $200k and saves 10%. Dev B clears $90k and saves 50%. Most readers assume Dev A is closer to FIRE. The math says otherwise.

Time-to-FI is a function of one variable: your savings rate. Income only sets the absolute size of the gap. The rate decides how fast you close it.

The brutal table

Standard FIRE math (5% real returns after inflation, 4% withdrawal rate, no other income) gives you this:

Savings rate	Years to FI
10%	51
20%	37
30%	28
40%	22
50%	17
60%	12.5
70%	8.5

Read it twice. Doubling your income while keeping the same savings rate doesn't move the timeline — only the dollar size of the portfolio. Doubling your savings rate from 10% to 20% cuts fourteen years.

Why this is true

A higher savings rate does two things at once. It grows the portfolio faster — more dollars compounding. It shrinks the target — your annual spend is the multiplier, and 25× spend is the FI number. Income only attacks the first axis. Savings rate attacks both.

This is also why "earn more" advice fails most of the people who follow it. The raise lands. The lifestyle absorbs it. Net wealth doesn't move.

The indie-dev wrinkle

Indie devs don't have salaries. A $200k year follows a $40k year follows a $130k year. The naïve fix is to track savings rate per month — useless, because some months are zero.

Track it on a rolling 12-month basis. Total inflows minus total spend, divided by inflows. That's your real number. That's the one to optimize.

The actionable form

You have two levers.

Cut spend. Each $1,000/yr you remove from your budget removes $25,000 from your FI number. A 25× multiplier on every recurring cut.
Bank windfalls. When a launch hits or a contract pays, the question isn't "what can I afford now." It's "what's my rolling savings rate after this." Default the answer: invest first, revisit lifestyle in twelve months.

That's it. Income is a knob. Savings rate is the lever.