Die With Zero

This book was more fun than I expected. It changed my perspective of focusing on a “FI number,” which is just a means to an end, to thinking about how to maximize the number of positive experiences in my life.

Why wait until your health and life energy have begun to wane? Rather than just focusing on saving up for a big pot full of money that you will most likely not be able to spend in your lifetime, live your life to the fullest now: Chase memorable life experiences, give money to your kids when they can best use it, donate money to charity while you’re still alive. That’s the way to live life. Remember: In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories. So what are you waiting for?

Time bucketing: having a “bucket list” of things I want to accomplish in my lifetime is inefficient, because some of the things can only be done during certain periods in life. It’s even better to bucket your life into 5 year increments and assign your goals to each time period. That way you can 1. Avoid accidentally waiting too long to accomplish a goal before it’s physically impossible, and 2. More smartly budget across the long-term.

Time buckets are a simple tool for discovering what you want your life to look like in broad strokes. Here’s what I suggest you do. Draw a timeline of your life from now to the grave, then divide it into intervals of five or ten years. Each of those intervals—say, from age 30 to 40, or from 70 to 75—is a time bucket, which is just a random grouping of years. Then think about what key experiences—activities or events—you definitely want to have during your lifetime. We all have dreams in life, but I have found that it’s extremely helpful to actually write them all down in a list. It doesn’t have to be a complete list; in fact, you can’t know right now everything you’ll ever want to do, because, as you know, new experiences and new people you meet tend to reveal unexpected additional interests that you’ll want to pursue. Life is all about discovery. And you will revisit this list later in life, too.

Bequests are not being generous: when you think about it, when you leave money to charities after you die, that’s not really being generous. You’re dead, so where is that money going to go otherwise? It’s actually being more generous if you give money away while you’re alive. Charities need the money now, why make them wait?

Also:

There’s a great sense of pride at having pursued an important goal wholeheartedly. If you’ve given something your all, you’ll get a lot of positive memories out of the experience no matter what happens. That’s just another form of the memory dividend I talked about earlier: When you look back from any point during your life, you will remember your actions in a positive light. In other words, even experiences that don’t end the way you’d hoped can still yield positive memory dividends.

This is not financial advice.