If you’re rethinking how to use your time, money, and energy in midlife or as you approach retirement, Die With Zero by Bill Perkins offers a refreshingly bold perspective. Rather than focusing on saving endlessly for a future that may never come, the book challenges you to intentionally convert money into meaningful life experiences while you’re still healthy enough to enjoy them.
What Die With Zero Is All About — And Why It’s So Compelling as a Financial Plan?
Published in 2020, Die With Zero by former hedge fund manager Bill Perkins quickly became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, especially among midlife professionals and retirees rethinking how they spend their time and money. The book challenges a deeply ingrained mindset: that accumulating wealth is the primary measure of financial success.
Instead, Perkins offers a more radical goal: use your money to create the richest life possible, and aim to die with zero dollars left unspent.
The idea isn’t about irresponsibility or draining your bank account. It’s about timing your spending to match your capacity for joy, recognizing that money is most valuable when used at the right moments, not hoarded indefinitely for a future that may never arrive.
As more people seek to reclaim agency over their lives — especially in the wake of the pandemic, rising burnout, and shifting values — Die With Zero has resonated in a big way. It sparks deep introspection and conversations about regret, opportunity, and purpose.
6 Key Insights from “Die with Zero”
Here are 6 key tips and insights from the book to help you live more fully and plan with purpose:
1. Spend Your Life Energy Wisely
Money is just a tool to help you get the most out of your finite time and energy. Perkins argues that your goal shouldn’t be to die with a large bank account, but to have used your money to create a rich, memorable life.
2. Don’t Over-Save — Optimize
Traditional financial advice pushes saving “just in case.” But Die With Zero suggests flipping the script: save enough for security, then focus on using your money to enjoy life now. Saving too much for too long can mean missing your prime window for adventures, family time, or personal growth.
3. Time-Bucket Your Life
Perkins introduces the concept of “time-bucketing”: breaking your life into 5- to 10-year chunks and asking, What experiences do I want to have in this phase of life? Then, plan your money and time accordingly — before that bucket passes you by.
4. Invest in Experiences, Not Just Assets
Experiences create lasting memories and shape who you are. Unlike material things, they appreciate in emotional value over time. Prioritize experiences that align with your values and give your life meaning.
5. Give Earlier, Not Just Later
If you’re planning to leave money to your kids, family, or causes you care about — why wait until you’re gone? Giving earlier means you get to witness the impact and your loved ones benefit when they need it most (e.g. early adulthood, starting families, buying homes).
6. Health Is the Ultimate Currency
No amount of money matters if you don’t have the health or energy to enjoy it. Plan your most active adventures during your younger years, and structure your later years around what your future self will realistically want and be able to do.
Is Dying with Zero a Sound Financial Plan?
Strictly speaking, Die With Zero isn’t a financial plan — it’s a philosophy of living. It’s about making the most of your finite time, energy, and money by intentionally spending on experiences that bring meaning, connection, and joy — before it’s too late.
But, it is challenging to turn it into an actual financial plan. As David said on the Boldin Facebook group, “You can only die with zero plan with a 99% success ratio if you either schedule your death (‘I’m busy that Tuesday, and I’ll still have about $300 in savings. How does Friday sound to you?’) or you are extremely lucky.”
However, there are definite ways to set up your financial plan to align with how to live your life.
8 Steps Toward Modeling a Die with Zero Forecast in the Boldin Planner
If you’re inspired by the Die with Zero mindset — maximizing life experiences while minimizing leftover money — the Boldin Planner can help you bring that vision to life. Here’s an eight-step approach to model it thoughtfully and confidently:
Step 1: Determine Your Likely Life Expectancy for You and Your Spouse, if Applicable
It starts with the end in mind: how long do you expect to live? (We know — not the most uplifting first step, but critical!)
Use a trusted longevity calculator to estimate a realistic lifespan for yourself and your spouse or partner. Then input those life expectancy ages (or 5-10 years as a buffer) into the Boldin Planner — this anchors your timeline and spending horizon.
Step 2: Dream Big and Get Specific
This is where Die with Zero gets fun. What do you want from life, and when? Make a wishlist of meaningful experiences, generous gifts, and big goals. Think about:
- Traveling the world for two years starting at age 61
- Paying for your grandkids’ college over the next decade
- Donating to causes you care about while you’re still alive
Use the Boldin Planner to schedule these across time. The tool supports multi-phase spending and one-time expenses, so map your dreams in detail.
Perkins recommends thinking in 5- or 10-year increments. Others like to break life into four key phases:
- Now
- Go-Go Years: Active, early retirement
- Slow-Go Years: Reduced activity and travel
- No-Go Years: Limited mobility and higher care needs
The more specific you get, the better the Planner can help you see what’s possible.
Step 3: Make Sure that All Other Aspects of Your Plan (Income, Savings, Assumptions) Are Accurately Input
Before you assess whether your dreams are affordable, make sure the rest of your plan is solid:
- Current savings and investments
- Income sources (Social Security, pensions, rental, etc.)
- Assumptions about inflation, returns, retirement date, and taxes
The Planner pulls it all together into a comprehensive forecast — but only if your inputs are accurate.
Step 4: Determine Your Long-Term Care Plan and Associated Costs
Even in a Die with Zero plan, aging comes with real costs. Estimate and enter potential long-term care expenses — whether you plan to self-fund, purchase insurance, or rely on family support.
The Boldin Planner automatically adds a long term care expense for the last 28 months of your life (and your spouse’s). The default modeling includes $1,966/mo for 12 months and then $5,900/mo for 16 months in today’s dollars, or a total of 117,992 over your lifespan. If you:
- Wish for care that is in excess of this national average cost, you should add it in the expenses section.
- Believe that you will be cared for by a family member, have long term care insurance, or another way of covering the expense, then you can specify that in the tool
Planning for this permits you to spend earlier in life without worrying about becoming a burden later on.
Step 5: Account for Other Risks to Your Plan
A big part of planning is to develop your plan B. To have enough flexibility or contingencies to get through when the worst case happens.
Different people have varying levels of tolerance for risk. Here are 21 things that could go wrong with your plan that you may want to account for.
Step 6: Assess a Deferred Lifetime Annuity to Cover Expenses Through the End of Your Life
A key challenge in a Die With Zero mindset is balancing spending freely with the risk of outliving your money. One powerful solution? A deferred lifetime annuity.
A lifetime annuity provides guaranteed income no matter how long you live. So, you can purchase the annuity and ensure that you have adequate income to effectively cover your “no-go” years, no matter how long those turn out to be.
You’ll want to use the Boldin Planner to assess the gap between existing income sources and your end-of-life expenses and then use savings to purchase an annuity that would start paying out at a future date. (Annuities are complex and expensive, but they can be an effective way to cover longevity risk – especially if you purchase one with inflation protection and pay out guarantees.)
This step creates a financial floor for your final years, so you can feel more confident spending earlier in life without fear of running out.
Step 7: Reality Check, Assess the Feasibility of Your Plan
Okay, with all that planning done, how does your plan look?
Dying with a negative balance?: If the plan shows you dying with a negative balance, then you’ll want to start making trade-offs. Prioritize what’s important until you get to dying with zero.
Dying with excess savings?: Use Boldin’s max-spending withdrawals strategy to see how much more you could enjoy or give over your lifetime.
Dying with zero?: Congratulations!
- Maybe you’ll wish to further tune your plan to reduce your tax expenditure or model other risks or opportunities.
Step 8: Finalize Your Plan and Live Life!
With a plan rooted in your dreams, backed by numbers, and grounded in the Die with Zero mindset, you’re ready to live with intention, not hesitation.
And remember: life changes. So can your plan. Boldin makes it easy to revisit, adjust, and stay aligned with what matters most.
Go live fully, give generously, and spend boldly — your plan supports it.