Review: Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins

Synopsis
A Common-Sense Guide to Living Rich….Instead of Dying Rich

Imagine if by the time you died, you did everything you were told to. You worked hard, saved your money, and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired.
 
The only thing you wasted along the way was…your life.
 
Die with Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life. It’s intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one’s so-called Golden Years.
 
In short, Bill Perkins wants to rescue you from over-saving and under-living. Regardless of your age, Die with Zero will teach you Perkins’ plan for optimizing your life, stage by stage, so you’re fully engaged and enjoying what you’ve worked and saved for.
 
You’ll discover how to maximize your lifetime memorable moments with “experience bucketing,” how to convert your earnings into priceless memories by following your “net worth curve,” and find out how to navigate whether to invest in, or delay, a meaningful adventure based on your “spend curve” and “personal interest rate.”
 
Using his own life experiences as well as the inspiring stories and cautionary tales of others—and drawing on eye-opening insights about time, money, and happiness from psychological science and behavioral finance —Perkins makes a timely, convincing, and contrarian case for living large. 

What I thought
I received a copy of this book from the Author, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is not what I was expecting when I agreed to read this book.  I thought I was going to only be able to take one or two things away and call it a day.  Boy was I wrong.  Do not let the title of this book put you off, this book is not just for those people that have a ton of money in the bank it truly is for everyone.  I wish I would have had this book earlier in my life.  

So the point of this book is not to spend all of your money and care about no one. It’s about living your life to the fullest.  If you want to give money to charity or to your children/grandchildren why wait until you are gone. Why not do it now when they may need it the most.  

This book weighs heavily on gaining experiences rather than amassing material things.  This book speaks to the value of a well-lived life.  He talks about how our culture overemphasizes hard work and delayed gratification. (Yes this is so true)  There are just some experiences that you can not put off for later in life because your health will decline, that is just a fact,  and you can not do the same things at 60 that you could have at 20. 

He states in the book that if you want to apply his method of dying with zero that you should talk about your finances with a professional before you make the move.  So no he is not portraying himself as a financial planning expert.

Even though I do not have a ton of money and I am your average living from paycheck to paycheck person I learned a lot from this book.  I believe there are a lot of people out there that can gain some knowledge from reading this book. 

My Rating: /5