the book "die with zero"

[kongmen]

I finished this book recently and can't stop thinking about it. I came up with a saying after this book that I keep repeating to my wife it's the 60/20 theory. If you spend sixty years accumulating you probably have twenty years max to "enjoy" spending. The basic idea of the book in my opinion is that as you age you tend to get less and less enjoyment from each dollar spent. I realize this is an early retirement board and people here are trying to maximize their time vs money ratio but are we really? I see many posts from people who are still actively accumulating including myself. My wife and I took a six year "sabbatical" from work but are both back to full-time work mostly because of boredom and I think because of this "habit" of accumulating money. I also realize that the ages of folks on here vary greatly so that will have an impact on how you feel about this topic.



I would be interested in folk's opinions on time vs money in general and what your reactions are to the book if you read it. This is of course a complex topic when considering LTC and other considerations.

 

[Sunset]

So what age did you take a 6 year "sabbatical" from work, I think that makes a huge difference.
The younger a person does that a "sabbatical" or "time off" , the more normal and even expected. Many folks take a year off around College age for example to travel.

While you have a 60/20 theory, I know my first decade it was tough to save any significant. Low pay and lots of expenses...

 

[kongmen]

So what age did you take a 6 year "sabbatical" from work, I think that makes a huge difference.
The younger a person does that a "sabbatical" or "time off" , the more normal and even expected. Many folks take a year off around College age for example to travel.

While you have a 60/20 theory, I know my first decade it was tough to save any significant. Low pay and lots of expenses...

Our sabbatical was from age 51 to 57.

 

[MarieIG]

So, if you pay for DGD's nursing degree, help DS with his downpayment on a house, contribute to a charity, or rent a vacation house for the entire family - you get less satisfaction from money spent? IDK.

 

[LateToFIRE]

I read the book ages ago, so don't recall much of it, but get the basic idea. I somewhat agree with the premise, but I'm not exactly an early retiree. At ~60, just now looking to pull the ripcord. Was FI at age 50, but waited for a few reasons:

1) I'm a late starter. Did a lot of crazy adventure stuff and screwing around in my 20's, so needed to hustle hard to catch up financially.

2) Career has been quite a grind, but an exciting one. And since it has been relatively high-income and involved a fair amount of travel, has allowed wife and I to indulge a lot of the experiences a lot of people wait to do in retirement. As a result, my bucket list not very long.

3) Really, my life, career, and business ventures in general have been an adventure, it's been tough at times, but very gratifying. Certainly not boring.

4) NW really took off the past 10 years, like practically tripled, owing to right assets, right place, right time, and some bold but informed risk taking during the recovery from the Great Recession.

I guess that's the other thing, 10 years ago for me would have been still in the shadow of that massive downturn, so would have been difficult to feel secure about the future at that time. And then just as I was about ready, COVID hit and threw another wrench in the works - my peps needed my help and I could not abandon them in the midst of a crisis.

But, all good things must come to an end, and time for that ~20 year stretch to begin. It is indeed scary to think about how short that sounds when I think about how quickly the past 20 years went by. But, like I said, those last 60 years have been an adventure, really don't think I'd change it.

 

[PatrickA5]

Didn't care for the book, really. The principle of the book was fine - "you've made lots of money - spend it (or give it away) before you croak and enjoy climbing mountains in your 30's instead of your 70's". OK, fine. It's just hard taking that kind of advice from someone that was filthy rich early in life. It just doesn't apply to most people.

Having said that, many on this forum, especially the ones' that have a hard time spending money, could probably benefit from reading it.

 

[jazz4cash]

I didn’t read the book but I’m curious to understand how you can die with zero unless you know how long you will live.

 

[Sojourner]

The basic idea of the book in my opinion is that as you age you tend to get less and less enjoyment from each dollar spent.

I think there is some truth to this, at least for me. Primarily, this is because since I FIREd at roughly age 47, it gives me more pleasure to spend far less than my SWR than to "blow that dough". I'm the kind of person who wants to be extra sure I'll never have to go back to w**k and will never come close to running out of money over the course of my (hopefully) 40-ish year retirement.

Maybe I'll give Die With Zero a read one day soon. Sounds interesting. I'm always looking for new insights on how to loosen the purse strings in a way that leaves me feeling happier without feeling unreasonably worried.

 

[LateToFIRE]

Another thought, I don't know about others, but my past 60 years have not all been financially accumulating.

Age 0-22: spent on education, maturing, etc
Age 23-30: spent low wage work, figuring out what to do with myself, no savings
Age 30-40: spent returning to school, establishing myself professionally, getting married, buying a home, starting to save, paying off huge student loans
Age 40-50: spent grinding super-hard, making up for lost time financially, hitting peak career earnings, banking windfalls, making LT investments, basically setting the stage for FI.
Age 50: survived big recession but NW crushed, burnt-out, begin to realize I could FIRE to a middle class, MCOL lifestyle, very very tempted, almost jump but decide instead to restructure approach to lifestyle/career
Age: 50-60 hit peak career responsibilities, great lifestyle but still grinding too much, NW recovers strongly
Age 60:n Done, finito, ready to move on to the non-work stage.

P.S. My point being that my productive monetary accumulation phase was at most about 20 years. Sure the other years were spent in preparation, but it just interesting to note the relatively short window of accumulation. I know it's not that way for everyone. I didn't begin saving until I was 33, I bet most others here started in their early 20's if not sooner.

 

[Aerides]

We had a very long running multi page thread on this book recently:

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/die-with-zero-book-109520.html

 

[RAE]

I haven't read the book, but I can appreciate the message. I have quite a few friends who retired around 60-ish, with a fair amount of assets, and planned to do a lot in retirement, for the next couple decades. But.........for several, declining health by the time they were 70-75 pretty much put an end to a lot of the activities they had planned. So, despite having adequate assets, they are just not spending all that much. Of course, it may turn out that those assets will be valuable if they eventually need nursing home care, so an argument can be made that it's good to have the $$ anyway. Or, if you want to leave a large inheritance, that's fine too. But I think a lot of people overestimate how long of a period of "active time" they will have in retirement.......especially if they don't retire until age 60 or later. There are always exceptions...........I have a friend who is in his late 70s and still climbing mountains and riding a mountain bike all over the place. But, it all depends on maintaining good health and fitness, as you age.

 

[athena53]

I didn’t read the book but I’m curious to understand how you can die with zero unless you know how long you will live.

It's a bit of an exaggeration but it sells books!

I listened to a podcast interview with the author. I am WAY too conservative to hope that the last check I write bounces, but he made some really good points for those of us who have every chance of leaving a large legacy behind even under the scary LTC scenario.

Marrying my second husband when I was 50 and he was 65 gave me some perspective. Our shared passion was travel and I knew better than to save all the dream trips until I retired. Good thing- I retired at 61 and he died 2 years later. We enjoyed a lot of wonderful destinations before that. Second example: when I was sweating out whether to send DS to an expensive military boarding school because he was falling through the cracks in public school, I was worried about what it would do to my saving for retirement. DH, whom I was only dating at the time, said, "How will you feel if you end up with a prosperous retirement and your son never finds his way?" So I sent him there. It was a miracle. He's 38 now, good career, good husband and father to my 3 beloved grandchildren. No idea if I'd sat on the money and let him inherit it at age 50 or so.

I'm also gifting DS and DDIL money every year- not enough to take away their independence or jeopardize my finances, I'm putting money into the kids' 529s and I'm about to take the 2 older ones on another 2-night trip to Chicago (1-hour flight, airline lounge visits, stay in a hotel with views of the airport and exorbitant food costs). Their little brother will join us when we go again in March. Let them enjoy my resources when I'm with them!

Still have to read the actual book.

 

[kongmen]

So, if you pay for DGD's nursing degree, help DS with his downpayment on a house, contribute to a charity, or rent a vacation house for the entire family - you get less satisfaction from money spent? IDK.

I'm just relaying info from the book. Those endeavors sound like wonderful ways to enjoy money in fact we've been talking about the idea of doing a vacation for the family on us. The author of the book did this when he turned 45 in fact.

 

[target2019]

I took my retirement from 35 to 50. Then 15 years of full-time work.

Die With Zero was a great book IMO. There's food for thought in the pages. It helped us focus more on spending down, and funding very nice travel plans.

 

[Teacher Terry]

My dad’s massive stroke at 59 ruined my parent’s retirement. They always said don’t wait to travel and I started at 44 after my kids were grown. I retired at 58 and did a lot of traveling between then and 65. I am really glad I did. I took a trip the last 2 years but going to Europe is exhausting and I will probably only go one more time. I am approaching 70 and although exercise daily aging takes a toll.

My mom successfully died with zero. My dad’s pension and SS paid for everything. Through the years their money was spent on travel and cars as needed. She prepaid all her funeral expenses. When she was dying she told us to sell her car and use it to take everybody that came to the funeral out to a nice lunch which we did. She lived alone just short of 90 until a week before she died of cancer. If she had lived longer it didn’t matter that her savings were gone because she could support herself and left no debts behind.

Despite having blue collar jobs my parents worked hard and saved and at least my mom got to travel and enjoy some of her retirement. We always encouraged her to spend her money and enjoy herself while she could.

 

[kongmen]

Didn't care for the book, really. The principle of the book was fine - "you've made lots of money - spend it (or give it away) before you croak and enjoy climbing mountains in your 30's instead of your 70's". OK, fine. It's just hard taking that kind of advice from someone that was filthy rich early in life. It just doesn't apply to most people.

Having said that, many on this forum, especially the ones' that have a hard time spending money, could probably benefit from reading it.

I agree with you regarding him being wealthy at a young age but I still think his advice is sound. It's my belief that the majority of people who spend decades accumulating wealth have a hard time spending down that wealth.

 

[kongmen]

I didn’t read the book but I’m curious to understand how you can die with zero unless you know how long you will live.

I don't think it's literal.

 

[kongmen]

"P.S. My point being that my productive monetary accumulation phase was at most about 20 years."


Good point.

 

[target2019]

My Dad and Mom were waiting, suitcases packed, for my brother and his wife. They were all going on a trip somewhere (can't recall). This was to celebrate his retirement just weeks previous. He was 61 when he dropped dead on the living room floor that morning.

 

[kongmen]

We had a very long running multi page thread on this book recently:

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/die-with-zero-book-109520.html

Thank you. I will check it out.

 

[Luvtoride]

Kongmen, I read the book a couple of years ago and embraced the "philosophy" that I got out of it namely:
- enjoying life is a 3 legged stool- having MONEY, TIME and HEALTH
- When we're young we have Health but not much of the other two
- When we retire be it ER or now (for me), HOPEFULLY we finally have all three and are able to enjoy the experiences of spending the money we have.

I'm retiring in 3 weeks (age 65) and hope that mine and my wife's HEALTH will stay well so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labor, while we now have more TIME to do so.
Jazz, the goal of actually "dying with zero" is kind of impossible to achieve (even the author admits this) but the theory of spending money on experiences that will be memorable for you and your family while you can is what counts.

My other MANTRA, which I read here somewhere, but sorry I can't give specific credit to who said it is:

"Work is trading time for money....eventually you are trading time you will never get back for money you will never spend".

The book is worth reading!

 

[PatrickA5]

I agree with you regarding him being wealthy at a young age but I still think his advice is sound. It's my belief that the majority of people who spend decades accumulating wealth have a hard time spending down that wealth.

+1. We haven't had a problem spending (or giving away) money since retirement. Just took the whole family (kids, spouses, grandkids) on a vacation and plan on doing that every year until we can't do it anymore.

 

[FindingForward]

Didn't care for the book, really. The principle of the book was fine - "you've made lots of money - spend it (or give it away) before you croak and enjoy climbing mountains in your 30's instead of your 70's". OK, fine. It's just hard taking that kind of advice from someone that was filthy rich early in life. It just doesn't apply to most people.

Having said that, many on this forum, especially the ones' that have a hard time spending money, could probably benefit from reading it.

+1. I read it when it first released. He makes some wrong assumptions about LTC. He also assumes everyone enjoys the same support system he does - aka family and friends able to help if hard times hit. That couldn't be further from the truth. Following his advice could put someone in dire straits when they most need help if they are relying on themselves.

Curious: did this book republish recently? All of a sudden, seeing new threads here and on other forums, despite this book being out a long time.

 

[Midpack]

I didn’t read the book but I’m curious to understand how you can die with zero unless you know how long you will live.

Even if you did know your exact expiration date, you still couldn't die with zero unless you put all your money in annuities at some point.

We all have different goals for our nest eggs. Some want to die with zero, some want to leave as much as possible to family, friends and/or charity, and every combination thereof. I know we can't plan to die with zero, but we'll strive to at least leave less than we started retirement with. To each his/her own...

 

[Sojourner]

"Work is trading time for money....eventually you are trading time you will never get back for money you will never spend".

So very, very true! I'm sure glad I realized this when I did and didn't continue to make that terrible tradeoff for several more years unnecessarily.