Maximizing Life Fulfillment

May 16

I recently read a book that has profoundly changed how I approach living my life. Die With Zero by Bill Perkins made me question my notions of time, money, and what I want out of life. The central theme of the book is how to live a maximally fulfilled life without having extra money in your bank account when you die. Here are some of my takeaways from the book.

The ingredients of life fulfillment

Wealth, health, and free time are the constituents for maximizing life fulfillment, and their quantities shift throughout a lifetime.

When you’re young, you typically have good health and a plethora of time, but limited wealth. When you’re middle-aged, you generally have good health and enough money, but lack free time. And finally, when you’re older, your health declines while you have ample free time and money.

The key is to find an optimal balance between wealth, health, and free time at the various life stages.

How I used to think about money

I have been in undergraduate and graduate school for the past 7 years, so adopting the mindset of a frugal person has been essential.

Throughout college, I was able to avoid exorbitant amounts of debt, but it may have come with an additional cost. I sacrificed experiences and trips in order to save up money. I was of the mindset that I should’ve been saving every dollar possible to avoid accruing excess debt.

Most college students and young adults don’t have a lot of money, but this doesn’t mean they should sacrifice experiences when they’re young and able. Thinking that an experience is expensive is not an excuse to not do it. You also have to factor in the cost of regret of you not doing it. The cost of regret was not something I factored into my decision-making when analyzing the true cost of a trip or experience in the past.

My current thoughts on spending

After reading this book, I still have a reflexive reaction to saying no and turning down a trip if it’s expensive. But I’m now able to notice that thinking and logically question my preconceived ideas of saving money.

Although I don’t have a strong desire to blow money on clothes or gadgets, I still feel like I need to save money for the future. But my earning potential will likely keep increasing the older I get, and my ability to go on trips or enjoy experiences will likely diminish with my age.

I was initially planning on saving every penny I earned to pay off my student loans as quickly as possible, but for what? Missing out on potentially life-changing experiences in my 20s and 30s is not worth that cost.

There has been plenty of research to ascertain the fact that spending money on experiences yields greater fulfillment and satisfaction than spending money on things. Experiences provide something called a memory dividend. This means that after the initial experience, there will still be many times when you look back at an experience and get a rush of positive emotions. And the earlier you have that experience, the more memory dividends to get to “cash in.”

Enjoying today while preparing for tomorrow

Saving and investing for the future is crucial if you don’t want to work full-time for the rest of your life, or run out of money before you die. Many people, however, take this step too far at the expense of sacrificing their time when they are young and healthy.

Saving a portion of your paycheck or salary and putting it towards your retirement is prudent. Saving every penny you earn to the point that you don’t go out with friends, take the trips you want to go on, or go see your favorite artist in concert is missing the point. Life is not a game to see who can accrue the most amount of zeros in their bank account, it’s about having experiences with people you care about.

Common advice among financial “gurus” is that you should be saving 20% of your paycheck. This view is flawed because it doesn’t take into account what stage in your career or life you’re in. If you are young and just starting out, the odds that your earning potential will rise with your age are high. So, it may not make sense to save anywhere near 20% of your income. Versus at the tail end of your career, it may be logical to save much more than 20% of your income for retirement.

Delaying gratification is good advice to heed for most people. But don’t take it too far and delay gratification indefinitely. When will you finally take the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor?

Actions toward optimizing life fulfillment

We get a little closer to our death date with each second that ticks off the clock. We don’t know exactly when that day will come, we just know that it is inevitable.

The time to start having experiences is now! We wait to have gatherings with friends and families for special occasions or holidays, but it doesn’t need to be that way. We can start throwing parties or get-togethers just for the sake of wanting to make new experiences with the important people in our lives.

Today, start thinking about the experiences you want to have in your life, and actually take action to start planning how you will make those experiences come to fruition. The sooner you have those experiences, the more memory dividends you can reap across your lifetime.

Rethinking the bucket list

A typical bucket list comprises a list of things and experiences to complete before you die. It does not, however, take into account the timing of those events across your life.

Time-bucketing your life can help you plan the experiences you need to do while you’re young and healthy enough to do them, and which experiences can be saved for later in your life.

Remember: your ability to fully enjoy an experience greatly depends on your health, wealth, and free time. The younger and healthier you are, the more likely you will extract maximum fulfillment from an experience.

For example, if you want to go backpacking in Asia, you will have a richer experience if you do it when you are young and fit enough to enjoy the trip and have the stamina to see various destinations.

On the other hand, if you want to take a European cruise, it may be practical to delay that trip to when you’re older and have more money. You’ll still be able to enjoy this experience even if you don’t have the health of a 30-year-old.

What really matters in the end

It is easy to fall into the default mode of life. You get comfortable with your job, the friends you have, and your daily routines. But when you look back and reflect on your life on your deathbed, you don’t want to think, “Why did I waste so much time and not explore or travel more?”

Ultimately, at the end of your life, you’re not going to care about all the money you were able to make in your life or the things you were able to acquire; you’re going to look back at the sum of your life experiences.

The average person gets about 4,000 weeks to live in their life. Calculating the number of weeks you have to live can help motivate you to start taking action, and to fully live your life.

Disclaimer

This post is not intended for everyone. If you are currently struggling from paycheck to paycheck, you would be better off learning how to leverage your time and grow your knowledge on how to make more money.

Also, if you are someone who spends lavishly, you may be spending too much money and not saving enough to the point where you will run out of money before you die. It can be difficult to find a balance between spending on experiences, without spending foolishly to send you into financial hardship.