The premise of “Die with Zero” sounds provocative: Bill Perkins argues you should plan to spend all your money before you die, optimizing for maximum life experiences rather than maximum wealth at death. Not “die debt-free” — that’s a different book. Perkins is talking about people who will almost certainly die with millions in unspent savings because they never gave themselves permission to spend it on things that actually mattered while they were healthy enough to enjoy them. The title is deliberately extreme. The actual argument is more nuanced than it sounds.
I picked it up because I’m interested in the other end of the FIRE question — not just how to achieve financial independence, but what to actually do with it.
The Core Argument
Perkins’s main point is that experiences have diminishing returns as you age — not because the experiences get worse, but because your health and energy limit what you can do. A 35-year-old can backpack through Southeast Asia or go heli-skiing. A 75-year-old probably can’t, or if they can, the experience is fundamentally different. The money you save to do those things at 75 would have produced more actual life enjoyment spent at 35.
He introduces the concept of “time buckets” — roughly decade-by-decade windows of life that each have experiences only available in that window. Your 30s might include experiences that require physical ability you won’t have in your 60s. Your 60s might include experiences that benefit from wisdom you didn’t have in your 30s. The point is to think about which bucket you’re in and what experiences you want to have in it, rather than deferring everything to some future version of yourself who might not be able to enjoy them.
Another concept I found genuinely useful: “memory dividends.” Perkins argues that experiences keep paying back through memories — the value of a great trip or a meaningful experience isn’t just the thing itself, but the decades of memories it generates. Invest in experiences early enough to have those memories for a long time, and you get a better return than if you had the same experience at 80 with fewer years to remember it.
What I Actually Agreed With
The fundamental insight — that there’s an optimal time to spend money on different experiences, and it’s not always “later” — is correct and underappreciated in the FIRE community. A lot of personal finance writing is essentially: save more, spend less, optimize, retire early. Which is fine. But the question of what you’re actually optimizing for gets less attention than it deserves.
Perkins is also right that most people significantly underestimate how much their spending will decline in old age. Health care costs rise, yes, but discretionary spending — travel, entertainment, activities — tends to fall substantially after your mid-70s. Hoarding money for a retirement spending phase that’s going to be smaller than you imagined, at the expense of experiences in your 40s and 50s, is a real mistake that a lot of otherwise financially disciplined people make.
(The “die with zero” framing is meant to be aspirational, not literal. He’s not telling you to drain your bank account at 85 and hope you die on schedule. He’s telling you to plan your spending more intentionally so you’re not accidentally working decades past the point it improves your life.)
The Honest Criticism
The book’s weakest spots are Perkins’s personal anecdotes, which make up a significant portion of the text. He’s a wealthy hedge fund manager and energy trader, and his examples of “spending money on experiences” include things like renting a yacht in the Mediterranean and flying private for vacations. These stories are entertaining but don’t translate well to most people’s financial situations. It creates a weird disconnect where the philosophical argument is broadly applicable but the illustrative examples are for the ultra-wealthy.
The book is also longer than it needs to be for the amount of new ideas it contains. The core thesis is clear by chapter three. The remaining chapters largely illustrate and reinforce rather than extend the argument. Some readers will find the repetition convincing (it reinforces the behavioral change Perkins is trying to create); others will find it slow.
Worth Reading?
Yes, with the right expectations. This is not a financial planning manual — it doesn’t tell you how to invest, how to save, or how to build wealth. It asks a different question: given that you’re going to accumulate wealth, how should you think about spending it to actually improve your life? For anyone who has put serious thought into saving and investing but less thought into what they’re saving and investing for, it’s a useful and somewhat challenging read.
The time bucket concept in particular is worth the price of the book. I’ve found it a useful mental model for making decisions about what to do and spend money on now versus later — not just in retirement planning, but in how to think about any major experience or expenditure.
PS: Check out other books I’ve reviewed in the same territory.
Not all my financial opinions are rosy — see my post on why I think Vanguard sucks for a different perspective.
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