Get Die With Zero

This approach to personal finance focuses on maximizing life experiences rather than wealth accumulation. Perkins challenges conventional wisdom about saving and retirement, showing how delaying gratification too long leads to wasted life energy and missed opportunities for meaningful experiences. Die With Zero provides a framework for balancing present enjoyment with future needs.

Core Principles

Strategic Timing of Experiences

Certain life experiences have optimal timing windows based on your health, wealth, and time availability. Rather than indefinitely delaying gratification, invest in peak experiences when you have the physical ability and mental capacity to fully enjoy them.

Memory Dividend

Experiences provide both immediate enjoyment and ongoing returns through memories that can be relived and shared. Unlike material possessions, positive experiences appreciate in value over time through the “memory dividend” of recollection and storytelling.

Peak Net Worth Planning

Rather than maximizing wealth until death, identify your optimal “net worth peak” —s the point when you should start spending down assets to maximize lifetime fulfillment. This typically occurs between ages 45-60 when you still have good health to enjoy experiences.

Try It Now

1. Calculate your annual baseline cost of living to determine your minimum survival needs
2. List key experiences you want to have and map them to specific time periods in your life
3. Take an inventory of your health, time and money to identify your current optimal balance between earning and spending
4. Start tracking your “fulfillment curve” by rating experiences on a numerical scale

Quotes

“The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.”

“If you spend hours and hours of your life acquiring money and then die without spending all of that money, then you’ve needlessly wasted too many precious hours of your life.”

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07/9/25