Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us. This is a personal financial on money, how it works,

how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it.

I'm your host, David Stein. Today is episode 446. It's titled, Die With Zero. Why You

Should Start Spending Now.

I recently finished two books that seem to resonate with the personal finance community.

They have sold well. The books have been recommended to me. I've seen them on social media.

The first is Die With Zero, getting all you can with your money and your life by Bill

Perkins. The second is the Pathless Path, imagining a new story for work in life by Paul Millard.

I'll admit, I was reluctant to read them. I assumed Die With Zero was about annuities,

something we have covered numerous times on the show, including episode 32, which was titled,

Die Broke. The Pathless Path had a more appealing title, but it felt like something

I've already been on for more than a decade, and I wasn't sure how helpful it would be.

Both Perkins and Millard have taken unconventional paths. Perkins is in his 50s. He was a successful

energy trader. He's still a hedge fund manager, a Hollywood film producer, and spends time

at high stakes tournaments, playing poker. Paul Millard is younger. He's in his 30s,

an independent writer, freelancer coach, is not financially independent. Perkins obviously

is, although he says he's not a billionaire, but it sounds like he's very wealthy because

he said he was one of the most successful energy traders in history. Both books provide

insights on answering this question. I'll use Perkins phrasing of the question. What is

the best way to allocate our life energy before we die? Perkins was trained as an engineer,

so he sees his question as an optimization problem. How to maximize fulfillment while minimizing

waste? And the problem he says we're trying to solve is total life enjoyment. It's such an

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