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When you are no longer able to process energy, you will be declared dead and your adventure will be over.
Whether the experiences we want are learning, skiing, watching our children grow, traveling, enjoying great meals with friends, advancing a political cause, attending live concerts, or any of the trillions
First of all, yes, you can certainly leave money to the people and causes you care about—but the truth is that those people and causes would be better off getting your wealth sooner rather than later. Why wait until after you die?
Across ages, whether looking at retirees in their sixties or those in their nineties, the median ratio of household spending to household income hovers around 1:1. This means that people’s spending continues to closely track their income—so as people’s incomes decline, their spending does, too. This is another way of seeing that retirees aren’t really drawing down all the money they’ve saved up.
that people did have good intentions to spend the money, but once they reached a certain age, they found that their wants and needs changed, or perhaps diminished.
As one retirement-planning adviser put it, “My dad is 86 and he doesn’t want to go anywhere, just stay close to home.”
In fact, thinking of annuities as insurance makes them a lot more sensible than thinking of them as investments—because as investments they are not good at all. But that’s not their goal—their goal is to insure you against the risk of outliving your money.
the premise of this book is that you should be focusing on maximizing your life enjoyment rather than on maximizing your wealth.
Many economists, on the other hand, think that thrift among young people is generally a bad idea.
In fact, as Levitt suggests, it can even make sense to borrow money (spending more than you’re currently earning) when you expect to earn a lot more down the road.
So let’s capture all of this in one basic formula for calculating your survival threshold: survival threshold = 0.7 × (cost to live one year) × (years left to live)
when an opportunity far from home does arise, I often hear them saying things like “I won’t know anybody there” or “I want to stay close to my mom.”
Second, don’t underestimate the risk of inaction. Staying the course instead of making bold moves feels safe, but consider what you stand to lose: the life you could have lived if you had mustered the courage to be bolder.
