Compounding
The crossing
The first year your pots earn more than you put in. Not independence — the moment the corpus starts working harder than you do.
What it is
For a stretch, almost everything you accumulate is money you transferred. Then a year arrives when growth — interest, mark-to-market, whatever the pots returned — is larger than that year’s contributions. That is the crossing. After it, time does more of the lifting. Before it, you do.
How this site measures it
Each completed year, spendable pots at the end minus spendable pots at the start minus what you contributed that year. If growth is at least what you added, that year is the crossing. Contributions are the same monthly adds as the FIRE loop, including SIP step-up and the PPF cap. We look once a year, not every month, so a noisy month does not count.
Why jewellery is out
Jewellery grows in net worth at a gold-like rate. You keep it. It does not pay rent. So the crossing, like years-to-FIRE, uses spendable pots only — liquid savings, SIPs, bonds, gold funds you could sell, NPS, EPF, PPF, foreign stocks. A family stash of gold that will not be sold does not pull the crossing forward.
Why it is not FIRE
FIRE is when spendable pots can cover a year’s expenses at your withdrawal rate, plus a house if you still need to buy one. The crossing can arrive a decade earlier. You might still be paying rent and still contributing. The pots have only started to out-earn you. Independence is later, when the corpus covers the life — not when it first beats the SIP.
What to do with it
Treat it as a checkpoint, not a product pitch. If the crossing is far, the levers are the same as FIRE: more going in, a rate you can live with, expenses that do not sprint. If it is close, you are already in the part of the curve that feels slow until it is not. Type your pots on the calculator. See both years. Last Calculate stays on this device.