📚 A&B #128

Die With Zero, The Fine Art of Small Talk, and more.

February 12, 2023

🙏 Support:

This week's newsletter was made possible by Audible.

Audible is having a special limited-time offer where you can get your first 3 months for free. If you're into audiobooks or always wanted to try them out, now's the best time to sign up (and if you're looking for a great audiobook I recommend "Never Finished" or "Atomic Habits.".

👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

🤓 Quick Question:

I'm thinking about creating a reading course with all of my best reading tips after being a serious reader for 5+ years and reading 250+ books.

Which course would you buy?

  • A) Self-paced course for $149

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Let me know by replying "A" or "B" to this email!

(And as a thank you for replying, you'll get a bonus discount when I launch either course)

📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is Die With Zero by Bill Perkins.

The majority of personal finance books focus on teaching people how to get more money into their lives, but this book will teach you how to get more life out of your money. If you want to learn how to buy happiness and better spend your money, this book is for you.

Here are 3 key lessons from the book:

📖

1) Plan Your Life In Stages

To live your life to the fullest, you need to examine 3 traits: health, money, and free time.

Here's how it usually breaks down:

  • 20-30 years old: You have lots of time and health, but little money.

  • 31-60 years old: You have a lots amount of health and money, but little time.

  • 61+ years old: You have lots of time and money, but little health.

Each age group has its pros and cons so you want to be wise when you're in each stage.

For instance, when you're young and have lots of time it makes sense to take cheaper but longer flights or cook at home more often instead of buying takeout. This is also when you want to do more extreme activities such as snowboarding or mountain biking (funny story about that one) since you probably won't want to risk getting injured at 40 or 65 years old.

On the flip side, if you're a parent you're probably making more money than when you were younger but have less time now so you want to "buy time." It makes sense to pay for a nanny to help take care of the kids or to hire someone to come in once a week to clean the house.

So take a minute to reflect on what stage you're in life and how you can take advantage of what you have most of today.

📖

2) Why Your Health Is More Valuable Than Your Wealth

In order to enjoy experiences (or life for that matter) you need to be in good health.

You can have little money but still have many wonderful experiences (ex: you can backpack through a country and stay in hostels). But if you have poor health, no amount of money will make things fun. As Confucius once said, "A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one."

Additionally, in life, you're going to have to "pay" for good health one way or another so it makes more sense to invest in your health on the front end than on the back end. Here's what I mean...

Investing in your health on the front end:

  • Buying organic food

  • Hiring a personal trainer

  • Getting a gym membership

Investing in your health on the back end:

  • Paying for doctor visits

  • Paying for a surgery

  • Paying for prescription pills

“It is much smarter to spend your healthcare money on the front end (to maintain your health and try to prevent disease) than to spend it at the end, when you get a lot less bang for every buck you spend,” writes Bill Perkins.

📖

3) Why You Should Give Away Your Money Today

Most people wait until they're dead (or near death) to give away all of their money, BUT that's actually the worst way to do it for multiple reasons.

If you wait until you're dead to give away your money, you'll never see the positive impact it had on the world. If you have a favorite charity, wouldn't you want to see the impact your donation had on people while you're alive?

Or let's say you're 95 and you decide to give your kids their inheritance.

Chances are your kids are now 55-70 years old and doing well in life or even retired. What would've been a lot smarter is giving them their inheritance when they're 25 or 30 so that they can use that money to buy a house, pay for a wedding, or go on a big family vacation together.

Here's another piece of advice from Bill: "When it comes to giving money to your kids, the optimal time is when they’re between 26 and 35—not too late to make a big impact and not so soon that they might squander the money."

So take a minute to think about what ages you want to give money to your children and when it will have the biggest impact on their lives.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Reflect on your life to determine how to get the best ROI from it:

  • Here's an exercise from the book to help you:

    • Draw a timeline of your life from now to the grave, then divide it into intervals of 5-10 years. Each of those intervals—say, from age 30 to 40, or from 70 to 75—is a time bucket, which is just a random grouping of years. Then think about what key experiences—activities or events—you definitely want to have during your lifetime.

2) Invest in your health today rather than paying for it tomorrow:

  • Join a gym

  • Hire a personal trainer

  • Get an annual checkup

  • Buy organic fruits and vegetables

  • Sign up for hot pilates (highly recommend)

3) A few quotes from the book worth reflecting on:

  • "Your whole point in earning money is to be able to spend it on the experiences that make your life what it is.”

  • "The main thing you’ll be retiring on will be your memories—so make sure you invest enough in those.”

  • “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. There is just no way to get those hours back.”

  • “Money has absolutely no value to you when you’re dead—that’s why I say you should die with zero.”

  • “Invest in experiences that yield long-lasting memories, always bear in mind that everyone’s health declines with age, give your money to your children before you die instead of saving for their inheritance, and learn to balance current enjoyment with later gratification.”

  • “In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories.”

📖 Reading Lesson:

⭐️ Weekly Quote:

“If all you want is to have a pile of money at the end, well, I guess that’s your choice. But bear in mind that I have never seen somebody’s total net worth posted on their tombstone.”

Thank you for your support everyone, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.

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