Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

The first item to confront is the uncertainty. The possibility that you will live longer than you expect is called longevity risk. Nobody wants to die early—the possibility of that is called mortality risk—but nobody wants to die after their money runs out either.

Making deliberate choices about how to spend your money and your time is the essence of making the most of your life energy.

the number of actual experiences available to you diminishes as you age.

The idea is that it’s always good to invest in experiences—but it’s especially good to do it when you’re young.

Experiences are like that: When you spend time or money on experiences, they are not only enjoyable in the moment—they pay an ongoing dividend, the memory dividend

The payoff from an investment does not have to be financial. When you teach your daughter to swim or to ride a bike, it’s not because you think she’ll get a better-paying job with those new skills. Experiences are like that:

If you’d like to get a more precise estimate of your life expectancy based on additional health factors, you’ll need to answer more health and lifestyle questions. One helpful tool is the Living to 100 calculator (https://www.livingto100.com), designed by a doctor and researcher who studies exceptional longevity.

An Impossible Task, a Worthy Goal

Rule No. 5: Give money to your children or to charity when it has the most impact.

It starts with tracking your health so you know when to start spending more than you are earning (when to crack open your nest egg). It also means knowing your projected death date and your annual cost of just staying alive, because those two numbers together tell you the bare minimum amount you will need between now and the end of your life.