The point at which someone has invested enough that, left untouched, compound growth alone will reach their full retirement number by a traditional retirement age — meaning they can stop adding new savings and just cover current expenses.
Picture pushing a snowball down a long hill. At some point, it's rolling fast enough and it's big enough that it'll reach the bottom of the hill on its own — you don't need to keep pushing. Coast FIRE is that point for your investments: you've built up enough that time and compounding will finish the job by retirement age, even if you never invest another dollar. You still need to earn enough to cover today's bills, but the pressure to save aggressively is gone.
A 30-year-old with $200,000 invested, earning a 7% average return, would grow to roughly $1.5M by 65 with zero further contributions — without doing any more saving. If $1.5M happens to be their FIRE number, they've already hit Coast FIRE at 30.
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