Die With Zero (Bill Perkins)

OVERVIEW

Does your perspective on life and mortality influence your finances? Yes! Refusing to think about how long you’ll live or how long you’ll be able to enjoy certain experiences, and imagining instead you’ll have a thousand tomorrows to do everything, impacts how you save and how you spend. It’s time to marry finitude with finances!

Die With Zero is a finance book focused on how to spend your money, not how to save it. Even though the author (Bill Perkins) notes there is something in this book for everyone, it will resonate most with over-savers, folks of the FIRE movement, and those who have discretionary money they could be spending but are not (i.e., people who are already affluent and/or can expect to be affluent in the future) – the advice will also be more actionable and relevant the younger you are.

This is about maximizing your living, not your savings… about growing your life, not your wealth. Die with Zero is separated into 9 “rules,” but I’m abandoning that structure in favour of presenting the 5 hard truths I think this book wants you to know. It all ladders up to this: die with as close to $0 as possible.

The goal of life isn’t to die with a huge pile of money – Capitalism tells us to value hard work, earning potential, and wealth. You can’t thrive within a capital economy if you’re not subscribing to these values at least in part, but always remember your values as a human being… leisure, relationships, adventure, etc. Keep the bigger picture in mind: the goal of life is not to accumulate money, it’s to fill your life with rich and engaging experiences. A full life is not the same thing as a full bank account. Get real about your relationship with money and the true goal of money… it’s a means to an end, not an end-in-itself.

Any money left in your bank account when you die is waste – Dying with a few hundred thousand dollars of unspent cash is not just financial waste, this money represents time you wasted working when you could have been doing other things, like traveling, spending time with your family, enjoying a night out with friends, stargazing, hiking, reading, etc. Money you die with is time you squandered. It doesn’t matter if you placate yourself by claiming “I enjoyed working!”… If you weren’t making a deliberate choice to spend your time in the office vs. time in leisure or time with loved ones, you spent your time unwisely and unconsciously – you squandered it earning money you didn’t need (remember, money is the means, not the end). To those imagining this extra money is for their kids’ inheritance, ask yourself: is the “random by-product of precautionary saving” truly ‘setting money aside?’ Are leftovers a willful inheritance (or are they just leftovers)? If you want to give your kids money (or your favourite charity or what have you), be intentional and deliberate about your giving… and remember: the money will probably mean more to them now than later. On that note…

$5,000 gets you more enjoyment in your 20s than in your 60s – Money has more potential to bring you enjoyment when you’re younger than it does when you’re older. In some cases, money saved until you’re much older may bring you no enjoyment at all. How much pleasure can $1 million dollars bring you on your deathbed, in a nursing home, in a hospital? In contrast, how much pleasure could it bring you in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s? (A lot more). Your ability to extract enjoyment out of money declines with age. Physical restraints sneak up on you, your health deteriorates, your kids grow up, your friends die. There will be a last time for everything – the last time you can enjoy lunch out with your Mom, the last time you can enjoy skiing without pain, the last time you can build forts and watch movies with your kiddos (before they grow up and think you’re uncool). Our window of opportunity for enjoying certain experiences (and the people to enjoy them with) is finite, and we don’t always know when the window will close forever. When it comes to money and time, spend early.

If you’re not spending deliberately, you’re saving foolishly (putting things off for “later”) – Most of us live on autopilot, as if we’ll live forever, as if there will be unlimited tomorrows to do the things that are important. But if you’re not deliberately converting your money into the life experiences you want, it will eventually be too late. Time is limited; your life is limited. While it can be distressing to think about death, refusing to acknowledge your finitude means you put things off indefinitely. You delay gratification for later, for some distant future – as if in the final month of your life you’ll be able to squeeze in all those experiences you put off. This is totally irrational. Not only because the older you get the less you can enjoy your money (see above), but also because none of us know how much time we have left. Delayed gratification isn’t something you’ll regret only once on your deathbed, it’s occurring in every moment, at every stage of your life. Start thinking about how you want to use your limited time and start spending your time (and money) deliberately on the life experiences you want.

Death and deterioration come for everyone, don’t delay as if opportunity lasts forever. If there are things you want out of life, you had better start now.

Would you sacrifice a trip to Italy today just to squeeze out 2 extra months on a ventilator 40 years from now? – This last one is controversial. Maybe you’re over-saving because you’ve got the “I’ll have time one day” approach… but maybe you’re over-saving because you’re afraid of running out of money when you’re old. It’s not that you shouldn’t save for the future, it’s that many people save too much for too late in their lives. Perkins wants you to avoid saving exorbitant amounts for a future self that can’t really enjoy that money (or may not be alive to even partially enjoy it!). But (get ready), he also wants you to ask: is sacrificing your quality of life now just to squeeze out a few extra months at the tail end really worth it? Are you even capable of saving enough to afford high-end medical care and every pricey procedure? (Especially when, given the price of American healthcare, the sky is the limit). Will you sacrifice experiences you can definitely enjoy today in favour of over-saving for a distant, maybe miserable, maybe protracted future of suffering? If you’re going to choose excessive precautionary savings over guaranteed enjoyment, make sure you’re doing it consciously, and make sure you know what you’re sacrificing vs. what you stand to gain. Dying is not an option, but living is. Just a thought.

Some sober advice from Perkins: over-saving is like trying to be your own insurance company… when you could instead transfer the risk to an actual insurance company (look up long-term care insurance and life annuities). Many people have outsized fears of running out of money, but you can outsource that risk instead of sacrificing your present happiness.  

In conclusion:

Life is an optimization problem: how do you maximize fulfillment and minimize waste? If life is the sum of your experiences, shouldn’t you be maximizing your experiences, not your wealth? Instead of over-saving and working for the sake of working, convert your money into the life experiences you want when they can best be enjoyed. The closer you get to dying with zero in a deliberate, planned way, the closer you get to filling your life with rich and meaningful experiences, before it’s too late.

WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)

Practice time bucketing, not kick-the-bucketing

We’ve all heard of a bucket list – that list of things you want to do before you die. Time bucketing is like that, but a more focused approach. On a sheet of paper, write out intervals of 5-10 years from now until you expect to die (e.g., 30-40, 70-75). Then, reflect on what key experiences you absolutely want to have in your lifetime (don’t worry about money)… now, take that list of items and separate them into each time bucket. Hiking the PCT will probably be more fun (and achievable) in your 20s or 30s, but maybe driving the Amalfi coast can wait until your 50s. Think about what age it would be ideal to have those experiences, and how many times you want them (maybe you want to ski with your buddies at least 40 times… better get cracking!). Remember, there’s a season for everything.

Die with zero

So, is your goal to fill your life with worthwhile experiences, or is your goal to die with a big pile of money (which represents thousands of hours you wasted working when you could have been living?) If you’re convinced it’s the former, then your goal should be to die with zero. Of course, it’s impossible to die with exactly zero – that’s okay. The goal is there only to push you in the right direction, to get your life off autopilot and focused on maximizing your living, not your net worth – “with this goal in mind, you are sure to get more out of your life than you otherwise could have.”

IN SUM:

Is this book entirely secular? Yes.

If I had to describe the book in one sentence? Why dying with $0 is the best way to ensure you’re maximizing your money, not wasting your time.

Who should read this book? Folks of the FIRE movement, those who need to re-evaluate what is valuable in life, and those who are curious how our perspectives on mortality can influence our finances.