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

by Bill Perkins

But there’s an even more important reason for a net worth peak: your goal is to die with zero. If your net worth keeps climbing, rising from your sixties to your seventies and beyond, then there is no way you will die with zero. So, at some point you must actually start dipping into your lifetime savings; if you don’t, you will end up with unspent money, which means you haven’t acquired as many experience points as you could have. That is why I say your net worth reaches a level at which it is the highest it should ever be—after which you must start spending it down on experiences while you can still extract a lot of enjoyment from those experiences. That point, in effect, is your peak.