[[Bill Perkins]] [[lit/kindle/Die with Zero|Highlights]] *Die with Zero* is the philosophical bedrock of the new, human-centric approach to financial planning currently championed by [[Ramit Sehti]]. The book lays out the case to a skeptical audience why working and saving tirelessly until retirement doesn't make sense. The book does have some useful but guidance on *how*, it really focuses on *why*. For the how, Perkins offers two web apps on his site [diewithzero.com](https://www.diewithzerobook.com/apps). For me, he's preaching to the choir. His concepts like "life energy" are useful framings for the wastefulness of dying with a big bank account (you traded more of your hours aka "life energy" for money than needed). His anecdotes offer surprising insights into how easy it is to lose years of your life to work by miscalculating your "peak", or when you should start spending down your savings. I especially appreciate his story of spending a majority of his liquid net worth on a 45th birthday party by flying his closest friends and family to the island of St. Barts for a multi-day bash. It's hard for me to imagine spending so much so early in life on one single event. However, he points out that the "memory dividend" from the event will pay out for the rest of his life. His ideas focus on the triad of health, money and time. In any stage of life, one is a limiting factor. When you're young you have health and time but not money. You also have very little downside risk but lots of upside risk (and time for the memory dividend to pay out). You should actually borrow money to reduce the limitation of money while you have health and time. In middle age you are likely to have a decent amount of money and health, and so you should make time to do the things you won't be able to do later in life. By the time you retire, your health is likely to be the limiting factor. You have what financial planners call the "'go-go" years of your retirement only for another decade or so. Still, you won't be able to do everything you could have when you were younger and those things might not appeal to you anymore. As you settle into your "slow-go" and "no-go" years, all you will have is your memories. As he points out, you "retire on memories", not money. To live a full life, you need to balance investing in assets and investing in experiences. Waiting until you retire to enjoy your life is just as foolish as never having saved money for retirement.