Melbourne couple: can you Coast FIRE before 50?

Coast FIRE is the moment where your existing savings can plausibly compound into a full retirement plan - even if you ease off the gas in your 40s.

This scenario is for a dual-income professional couple in Melbourne (age 36, renting) with about AUD120k in savings today. The research baseline for this persona is AUD160k-AUD240k household gross income, or roughly AUD10.6k-AUD15.1k/month after tax. Typical "comfortable but not extravagant" renting costs land around AUD5.2k-AUD7.6k/month, leaving a realistic savings capacity of roughly AUD3k-AUD7k/month.

The pack compares three practical ways to define "coast before 50":

• Keep pushing: save hard to 50, then drop to a lower maintenance contribution.
• Coast sooner: ease off in your mid-40s, so lifestyle improves earlier.
• Family-aware: assume a short window of higher costs and lower saving around family formation, then push again.

All figures are shown in today's AUD (the simulator uses a real, after-inflation return). Each path is run under three real-return assumptions (2.6% / 3.2% / 4.3%) to show how much of "coast" is compounding versus effort.

What the numbers show

The most useful output is not "did we get rich?" but how sensitive the plan is to returns and to a handful of high-impact life choices (rent level, a car cycle, and a family-cost window).

This table is generated from the preset variants when you run the scenario in the simulator:

"Safe" = the retirement spending level that keeps a 60-month buffer in the model. Use it as a guardrail, not a promise.

What this comparison evaluates

1. When is "coast" actually safe? (Not "forever", but safe enough that a bad decade won't immediately break the plan.)
2. How much lifestyle can you buy with "coast"? (What happens if you redirect savings into better housing, travel, or time back?)
3. What's the big failure mode? (Usually: coasting too early, then taking a housing or family cost step-up anyway.)

How the costs are planned

This scenario does not try to model the full Melbourne household budget line-by-line. Instead, it treats your investable savings as the main engine and then adds a few "budget killers" as explicit entries:

• A long-run rent upgrade (extra space / better location).
• A car cycle (a realistic upgrade and a later replacement).
• One-off relocation/setup costs.
• In the family-aware path, a temporary higher-spend window plus a baby setup buffer.

Retirement spending varies by path: AUD8,500/month for the keep-pushing path, AUD7,500/month for the coast-sooner path, and AUD7,000/month for the family-aware path (reflecting Melbourne-retiring cost realities at different lifestyle levels). A small Age Pension line is included as a conservative planning anchor, but in reality it is means-tested and could be lower (or zero) for higher-asset households.

The strategy

Keep pushing: hit 50 with momentum

You invest aggressively through your late 30s and 40s, then you deliberately "coast" by dropping to a smaller maintenance contribution from 50 onward. This path is the closest thing to a clean Coast FIRE narrative: it creates a large compounding base before you relax.

Coast sooner: buy time back earlier

This path is intentionally tempting: it moves the lifestyle trade-off forward by easing off in the mid-40s. It answers the question, "If we start taking the win earlier, what return assumptions does that require?"

Family-aware: assume life gets messier

Instead of pretending your savings rate will be smooth forever, this path models a few years where costs rise and savings drop, then assumes you rebuild saving effort after that period.

Personalise it

When you open the preset, start with the life path that matches your near-term reality, then adjust only the entries that are truly different.

• Change the two monthly investing bands (pre-50 and post-50) to match your actual "surplus after bills".
• If buying a home is likely, add a deposit + purchase-cost one-off and a monthly ownership-cost delta (and remember home equity is not counted unless you model a future sale).
• Replace the "Family formation costs" band with your own childcare/leave plan once you have credible numbers.
• If you're new to the simulator's metrics, start with Reading your results. To edit timing, one-offs, and age bands, see Working with financial entries.

Australia-specific notes

• Superannuation vs accessible savings: This model treats all investing as a single pool. In real life, super is typically locked until at least age 60. If most of your saving is in super, treat "coast before 50" as "we can ease off contributions, but we still need cashflow to age 60+".
• Age Pension is means-tested: The included pension line is a planning anchor, not a promise. For higher-asset households it can be much smaller (or zero).
• Returns are real, not nominal: A 3.2% "real" return is after inflation. Your brokerage account will show higher nominal returns if inflation runs hot.

This scenario is an educational model, not personal financial advice. It simplifies taxes, benefits, and portfolio implementation so you can stress-test decisions before speaking with a qualified professional.