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32. Die With Zero


We wouldn't say that this book was what led us to do these RV trips because we were already in Utah on our first extended trip when Anjuli read it, but it articulated many of the thoughts we had been having such as:

  • Working less and spending more money/time together while we are all still younger, rather than trying to work hard and squirrel away a large nest egg for the promise of enjoying ourselves in the typical retirement time, at which point Jordan might be heading out on her own and we might not be in top shape or health to do the things we want to do.

  • If you die with a giant pot of money, you wasted part of your life earning that money that you never got to utilize. So, try to find a balance between working/saving and spending.

  • If you spend your whole life only striving to save money, you will struggle to spend it later when you retire. Whenever we are deciding whether something is worth the money, we think about what memories it will create and the joy it will add to our lives. Basically, we freely spend more on experiences rather than stuff.

  • Rather than dying with a bunch of money that you leave to your kids, spend it doing things with them as a family or giving it to them when it is more useful to them, not just by default when you die and they might not really need it anymore since they may be older too. We set out to make as many memories as we can on our trips and started as early as we could, getting as many memory dividends as possible, as the book calls them. Not only is it fun to create the memories in the first place, but you get to enjoy them again each time you reminisce. Jordan was about 2 years 1 month when we took the first Nova Scotia trip, so old enough to see things out in the environment, but we know she won't remember them. We will for many years though, and took many photos and videos and display them in the best ways we could to help us all remember (prior separate post about this).


I can't remember if these were all specifically from this book now - it was a while ago, but these sort of ideas. I'm sure there were more ideas, but this is off the top of my head. These concepts apply more after basic needs are met, of course, and finances are in order.

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