There are several mindsets that exist around saving and spending money. There’s the “You Only Live Once (YOLO)” crowd who seek enjoyment today over a focus on the future. Then there’s the “save for a rainy day” mindset. This has you preparing and saving for the future, sometimes foregoing things today for security in the future. I personally would consider myself a blend of the two. I enjoy creating experiences today, but I also devote energy toward planning for the future. Do you have to die with zero to live a full life?
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I spend a lot of time talking about saving, investing and retirement. I recently picked up a book called ‘Die with Zero’ by Bill Perkins. It really got me thinking about everything. It made me pause to consider some of the things I have put off over time. Those things I keep adding to my “bucket list” for when I retire. It had me thinking about just how fragile and finite life really is.
So, what does Die with Zero exactly mean? The concept of dying with zero is that you need to assess your life and better balance saving with spending. You need to spend at the right times throughout the years to optimize your life with memorable experiences and live it to the fullest. Die with Zero encourages you to maximize your positive life experiences. It reinforces the concept that your life is the sum of your experiences. It does NOT, however, promote going into debt to achieve these goals.
My key takeaways from ‘Die with Zero”
1. Investing in experiences pays you a memory dividend.
It is morbid to think about, but we will all reach our last days of life on earth. At that time, we’ll reflect on the past. Chances are, we will not be recollecting the material things we’ve acquired. We will be recalling all of the positive experiences we’ve had throughout life – time with family, epic adventures, road trips and so forth. During that time, we’ll also reflect back on regrets. We can counter those regrets by purposefully creating positive experiences.
When you create positive experiences in your life, those experiences are worth something. All of the positive experiences accumulate over time. Memories stay with us throughout life and are reignited when we revisit old photos, have conversations with loved ones or when we have associations of those memories with other things. When we’re near the end and have accumulated more positive experiences versus a pile of regrets, that is a fulfilled life. Be intentional about creating positive experiences during each stage of your life.
2. We all have many births and deaths, not just one.
This is where Die with Zero really had me thinking. When each of us goes through life, we experience many deaths and births through the course of our overall lives. Our childhood self (many times along with our wild imaginations) dies, and we give birth to adulthood. Our free, selfish self dies when we partner up and/or give birth to our parent/married self. Much of our independence dies to give birth to our elderly self. When you become old, driving becomes a challenge, hearing becomes a challenge and so forth. Thinking about my life in this way blew my mind. It helped me understand that each stage of our life is important for different reasons. So, we need to consider our life’s goals in each of these many life stages before that phase of our life dies and it becomes too late (regret).
3. Time-bucketing your life is critical to getting the most from it.
Opportunities to create positive, memorable experiences occur throughout life. Die with Zero encourages you to ditch the ‘bucket list’ in favor of understanding the various seasons of your life and matching your goals and positive experience making with those life stages. For example, if you’ve ever wanted to go backpacking through Europe, the most optimal time would be in your early 20s, before you have commitments, family and other responsibilities to attend to. It is also a time when you’ll likely have major energy to scale mountains, hop trains and so forth. Doing that same trip in your 40s or 50s looks and feels much different. If a goal is to cruise Alaska, this is something that can be done at any stage in life, so there is not a ton of risk in postponing if needed.
To all of the young people out there, the best time to take major risks is today. If you have Hollywood dreams, taking a couple of years while you’re young and perhaps broke to pursue the dream isn’t going to be as risky as trying to do so after you’ve built a career and started a family. Coming from my 40-something years of experience on this earth, if you’re young and have dreams, don’t let society dictate your path. Follow your heart…at least for a while. If you want to take a risk on starting a business, do it. If your goal is to spend more time with your family, make it happen. The window will close. Your kids will be grown, and you won’t get a re-do. This will hit your regrets pile. If you are coming up on a window in life that is closing, but you still have goals for that phase of your life, think about what it would take to accomplish those now. Remember, all of these positive experiences are going to add up and become the overall measure of your life.
4. Aim to literally die with zero through thoughtful spending on yourself and loved ones. But, make sure you have all of your personal living needs covered first.
Bill Perkins, the author, encourages you to spend your money throughout life to accumulate memorable experiences. You should, however, do so not at the expense of your living costs and needs. And also, not in situations where you’re putting yourself in debt. If you have children or other close loved ones, and you have accumulated savings over the years that you intend to leave to them upon your death, consider the right times while you are still living to gift money vs. leaving an inheritance. The author considers leaving an inheritance as a sub-optimal use of money. Remember that each of us, including your kids, have those phases of life described earlier. If your kid wants to adventure for a year while they are young and have the energy to do so, perhaps helping them achieve that financially (and seeing it) would bring you joy. This also helps them add points to their positive experience bucket. If you plan to leave money to charity, consider setting something up now, whether it is a scholarship, trust or something similar so that you can see your legacy play out before your own eyes.
In Closing
I really enjoyed Die with Zero and feel that it gave me a lot of points to ponder in my own personal finances. If you are a hardcore saver like me, the concepts discussed in this book help you to balance out your saver tendencies with the reminders that life is finite. Those many births and deaths of your own life discussed earlier truly play out. And if you don’t carefully ensure you’re tackling your goals and life experiences, time will very easily slip away. Don’t let it.