These are some notes from the book: Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.
Experiences and relationships are what give your life meaning. Therefore, you should aim to invest all your money in enriching experiences and relationships before you die.
- Saving money you never intend to spend isn’t smart financial planning because it represents missed opportunities
- Saving money you’ll never spend means sacrificing the value that money could have added to your life.
Why You Should Spend All of Your Money By the Time You Die
Money Can Facilitate Enriching Experiences
Balancing saving with experiences is important because as you reach the end of your life, you’ll value the experiences you had more than the money you saved.
For example, say you’ve always dreamed of traveling to Fiji. You could spend the money on the trip and have fond memories to look back on for the rest of your life. Or you could save that money until it’s too late in life to fully enjoy traveling. In retrospect, it’s unlikely you’d regret taking the trip, but you probably would regret not taking it when you had the time, energy, and money.
Another reason experiences are excellent long-term investments is that you don’t enjoy an experience only while you’re having it; you enjoy the memory of the experience forever.
Investing in positive experiences can be an important part of having a growth mindset. When you have a growth mindset, you believe you can improve your skills over time.
- Examine how your money can help you get the most out of your experience.
Money Can Advance Causes and Relationships You Care About
Waiting to give away your money until after your death might mean missing the opportunity to put your money to its best use.
How to Spend All Your Money by the Time You Die
Spend While You’re Young
If you don’t invest in experiences while you’re young, you risk missing out on many of the best moments in your life.
Forgoing experiences when you’re young just to save money is illogical. You might not get the chance to have those experiences again, and they won’t be the same when you’re older. For instance, your 25-year-old self might be thrilled to go skydiving, while your 65-year-old self might not be.
The other reason you should start spending young is that if you wait until you’re deep into retirement, you’ll likely run out of time to spend all your money in a meaningful way.
Plan Your Long-Term Spending Trajectory
Plan how and when you’ll spend and save over the long term.
You should spend the first part of your life saving more than you spend and the second part of your life spending more than you save.
Spend Money on the Right Things at the Right Time
Write down the experiences you want to have and the corresponding time in your life when it makes the most sense to have them.
For example, there will be a last time to take growing kids trick-or-treating, a last time your knees can handle a mountain summit, a last time you feel like sitting on an airplane for 14 hours to see a new continent, and so on. Therefore, you must not let “last chances” pass you by.