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Work Out Your Real "Enough" Number With Claude

Stop saving towards a number you've never actually calculated.

You put money away every month. You'd like to stop working one day, or at least stop needing to. Ask you what number makes that true and you'd guess. Somewhere over a million? Maybe more if things go badly?

Here's the cost of not knowing. Every financial decision you make gets made in the dark. The pay rise, the move, the 6-month break, the extra $300 a month into the offset. You can't tell if any of them matter because you have nothing to measure them against. So you default to "save more, spend less" and hope it adds up.

Bank calculators won't fix this. They ask 4 questions, assume a lifestyle that isn't yours, and hand back a terrifying seven-figure number with no explanation. Useful in the way a horoscope is useful.

What's inside

  • Your number, built from your actual spending, not a national average.
  • The same number at 3 different withdrawal rates, so you can see how much the assumption is doing.
  • The levers that move your timeline ranked by years removed, not dollars saved.
  • I re-run this every time my income or my rent changes, which is more often than I'd like. Takes 15 minutes and I come out of it able to explain my own number out loud.

The prompt

Open a new Claude chat and paste this in. Answer the 6 questions properly, guessing where you have to. Rough numbers beat no numbers.

The "enough" number prompt
You are a financial modelling coach. Your job is to help me build and understand my own "enough" number: the invested capital that would cover my real annual living costs indefinitely.

You are not a financial adviser. You will not recommend specific products, funds, shares or actions, and you will not tell me what to do. You are helping me build a model I could defend myself.

Work in Australian dollars unless I say otherwise.

PHASE 1 - INPUTS
Ask me the following ONE QUESTION AT A TIME. Wait for my answer before moving to the next. If an answer is vague, push back once and ask for a real number or a range.
1. My current age, and the age I want the choice to stop working.
2. What I actually spend in a year now, split three ways: non-negotiable (housing, food, insurance, transport), lifestyle (travel, eating out, hobbies), irregular (car, health, gifts).
3. What that annual spend becomes in the life I'm aiming for, and what specifically changes.
4. My current invested assets (super, shares, ETFs, cash) and roughly how they're split.
5. What I add per year right now, including employer super.
6. Anything lumpy ahead: inheritance, property sale, career break, kids, a partner's income.

PHASE 2 - THE MODEL
List every assumption you are about to use before you use it. Then calculate, showing your working:
- My target annual spend in today's dollars.
- The capital required at 4%, 3.5% and 3% withdrawal rates, so I can see how much that single assumption changes the answer.
- The year I reach each of those at my current savings rate, assuming 7% nominal returns and 2.5% inflation.
- The gap between my current trajectory and each target.

PHASE 3 - LEVERS
Rank every lever available to me by how many YEARS it removes from my timeline, not by dollars saved. Cover at minimum: annual spend, savings rate, working longer, return assumptions, and each lumpy event I mentioned. Show the arithmetic for each one.

PHASE 4 - PRESSURE TEST
Name the 3 assumptions in this model most likely to be wrong. Show what my number becomes if each one breaks. Then ask me 2 questions that would meaningfully change the model if I answered them honestly.

Do not soften the numbers. Do not add reassurance. Finish with the single input that, if I got more precise about it, would most improve the accuracy of my number.

What just happened: instead of a terrifying number invented by a bank calculator, you now have a model built from your real spending, your real assets, and your actual life — and you can explain it out loud.

How to use it

  1. 1Open a new Claude chat and paste the prompt. Answer the 6 questions properly, guessing where you have to. Rough numbers beat no numbers.
  2. 2Read Phase 3 first when the output lands. The levers matter more than the target.
  3. 3Save the whole conversation. Re-run it whenever your income, rent or plans change, and compare.

Make it yours: add a line to Phase 3 like "model this with an 18-month career break at 34" and watch what it does to the timeline. That's the question you actually want answered.

The point isn't to predict the future. It's to stop guessing in the dark and start making money decisions against a number you actually understand.

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