As Perkins often reminds us, in order to enjoy an experience, we need some mixture of time, money, and health. The least flexible of these is health. The typical retiree has the most time and money in their late 60s and afterwards, but likely is not eager to go mountain bike riding, multi-day backpacking, cliff jumping, or a host of other things that require a level of health (or at least recuperating joints!). Because of this, Perkins recommends planning around that factor m

Perkins rightly draws a distinction: “We all die a multitude of deaths throughout our lives. [...] The day I die and the day I stop being able to enjoy certain experiences are two distinctly different dates.” With each passing year through retirement, it is more likely than not that the list of things we can experience gets shorter. He acknowledges that we ought to delay gratification given the practical reality that consuming 100% of income/available funds immediately often

This chapter is a bit refreshing after what we’ve been reading. Perkins acknowledges that, especially when we’re young, we can indeed overspend on present enjoyments. We should not be on auto-pilot saving mode, delaying all gratification, nor should we be on auto-pilot spending mode just because we’re young and free. His recommendation is to “Strike the right balance between spending on the present (and only on what you value) and saving smartly for the future.” While he woul

To summarize this chapter in one sentence: decide how much of your wealth you’d like to give to your children, charities, or other beneficiaries, and do that now rather than waiting until you’re gone. Most inheritances (from small bank accounts, to the sale of mom and dad’s home, to leftover IRA money, etc.) occur around the age of 60. Often at this time in their life, the “children” are close to or already retired themselves. They’ve saved up their own money, and while the i

Perkins acknowledges, “dying with exactly zero is an impossible goal.” By this he doesn’t mean spending all your money now and living destitute the rest of your life. He means spending your last dollar as you take your last breath. His recommendation is to use two primary tools to get as close as we reasonably can. Firstly, life insurance companies make it their business (literally) to estimate how long you will live. While almost nobody is “average”, with nearly 100% falling

This chapter answers “why” we should aim to die with zero, while the next addresses “how”. For Perkins, the “why” is simple: If we have money left over, we did not efficiently maximize our “enjoyable experiences”, which, for him, seems to be the meaning of life. To illustrate: Imagine you take home $100,000/year while working. After a happy retirement, you die and have $200,000 left to your name. For Perkins, the waste is not necessarily that you did not spend that $200,000,

What are your favorite memories? A few come to mind for me, including the trips we’ve taken as a family. When Kelli and I were teachers, we would spend a good deal of our summer break on road trips. We drove to places from LA to Vermont, and many in between. Traveling with small children (often at least one baby) wasn’t easy, but looking back that’s part of the fun we have when reminiscing. There was one day in particular we bit off more than we could chew. We left the Philad

Perkins used to be an engineer and, like all engineers, was trained to optimize for accomplishing a particular goal in the most efficient way. In this book, he is applying his engineering to life and wealth. In his words, this book answers the question: “What is the best way to spend your life energy before you die?” In order to answer this, Perkins must take a stance on other, prior questions such as: What is the goal/meaning of life? One of Perkins’ acknowledged premises is