Die With Zero

Perkins, a former energy trader, attacks a problem almost no finance book acknowledges: dying with too much money. His data point is blunt, many retirees spend less than their portfolio earns, meaning decades of sacrifice bought experiences they never redeemed. The book reframes net worth as a tool for converting money into memorable experiences at the right age, not a scoreboard.

The core framework is 'time bucketing': listing what you want to do in life and assigning each experience to the decade where it's physically and practically possible. Backpacking fits your twenties; a slow cruise fits your seventies; teaching your kids to surf has a five-year window that compounds no interest. Perkins argues that experiences pay a 'memory dividend' that, unlike deferred wealth, you collect for the rest of your life.

It's a deliberately provocative counterweight to the save-everything culture of personal finance, and it lands hardest with disciplined savers, the exact people most at risk of deferring life indefinitely.