Die with zero or save for freedom? The spending debate

The Short Version

Bill Perkins argues that most people save too much out of fear, and that the point of money is to turn it into experiences while you still have the health and time to enjoy them, ideally spending down to roughly zero by the end of life [1]. Morgan Housel, a lifelong saver, answers that the most valuable thing money buys is independence, the ability to live on your own terms, and that every dollar you don't spend is spent on that freedom [2]. Laurie Santos adds a warning that cuts against careless spending: once basic needs are met, more money and more stuff stop raising happiness, partly because we quickly get used to what we buy, while time, connection and presence keep paying off [3]. The debate is less stark than it looks. All three reject hoarding for its own sake and spending on things that fade, and they converge on a practical rule: spend deliberately on experiences, time and people, save enough to buy real independence, and avoid either extreme [1][2][3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Bill Perkins: die with zero, and spend on the right things at the right time

Perkins's book Die With Zero starts from a radical premise: your goal should be to die with zero dollars left, having used your money to create the richest life possible, measured in memories rather than wealth [1]. He argues that the traditional model of saving heavily for retirement is flawed because it delays joy, often until it is too late to fully experience it [1]. The things that truly matter, which he calls "experience points," are memories, relationships and once-in-a-lifetime adventures, and money is only useful to the extent that it makes those possible while you are alive and healthy [1].

Fear-based saving. Perkins's diagnosis is that people over-save out of fear. He targets what the book calls the "just in case" mindset: being prepared matters, but many people save far beyond what they will ever need and miss meaningful experiences as a result [1]. His fix is to calculate financial needs more realistically and then spend purposefully and without guilt [1].

Timing and healthspan. The book's central theme is timing. There are optimal periods for different experiences, and waiting too long reduces their value. Backpacking through Europe at 25 offers a different return on life than doing it at 65 [1]. So Perkins urges readers to match spending to their healthspan, not just their lifespan [1]. His tool for this is time bucketing: break your life into five-to-ten-year chunks and plan the experiences you want in each, so you live with intention and avoid the regret of missed windows [1].

Memory dividends. An experience keeps paying after it ends. A vacation at 30 still brings joy at 50 when you look back on it, which Perkins calls a memory dividend [1]. Relationships work the same way: invest early and consistently in people and shared experiences, and the long-term return in happiness grows [1].

Giving while alive. Perkins challenges the habit of leaving large inheritances at death and argues for "timely giving": supporting loved ones while you are alive, when help has the most impact [1]. Your heirs, he suggests, likely don't need a massive windfall; they need your love, support and help when they actually need it [1].

Not a licence to be reckless. The summary is explicit that Die With Zero is not a call for reckless spending. It is about strategically allocating time, energy and money for maximum fulfilment. Perkins emphasises tracking net worth and planning for health-related expenses, while insisting that time is your most valuable asset and it keeps shrinking [1]. The closing message is that you can't take it with you, and that the goal is a life rich in stories rather than statements, living fully rather than dying wealthy [1].

Morgan Housel: savings buy independence, and independence buys fulfilment

Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, starts from a different place: what most people are really after when they chase wealth is freedom, which he defines as independence [2]. He is a lifelong saver, but not out of pessimism. He saves because independence brings him the most fulfilment [2].

Why saving is spending. Housel's core argument is that independence comes from the car and the house you didn't buy: "every dollar that you don't spend is money that you are actually spending on independence" [2]. He illustrates what independence means with a story about young Franklin Roosevelt, who complained about rules and schedules. Given a day to do anything he wanted, Roosevelt followed his usual schedule but was much happier, because no one told him to [2]. Freedom is not doing nothing; it is doing what you choose. Housel lived this himself. As a college junior, he took an investment banking internship where the saying was that if you didn't come in on Saturday, you shouldn't bother coming back on Sunday. He hated it, not because of the hard work but because he was told to do it. Today he sometimes works 80 hours a week, but on his own terms [2]. He adds the peak-end rule: how you leave a career colours how you remember it, so leaving on your own terms matters [2].

Independence plus purpose. Housel's formula for a good life is "independence plus purpose": a purpose bigger than yourself, such as family, faith or work, and the independence to pursue it on your own terms. Money is neither, but it can support both [2]. He quotes Felix Dennis, who said that if he could live again he would make as much money as he could, retire at 35, and plant trees and write poetry [2]. He also warns that high earners, like a law firm partner working 100 hours a week, may have less independence than they had at 15 [2].

Money does buy happiness, indirectly. Housel agrees money absolutely can buy happiness, but usually indirectly [2]. A big house helps because it makes hosting family and friends easier. An expensive vacation helps because of the memories made with loved ones. If a beach vacation with his kids is a 10, playing Legos on the living room floor might be an eight and a half, because the real source of joy is uninterrupted time together [2]. He notes that the best memories from trips with his nine-year-old son come from the flights, rental cars and dinners, not the ski slope or the game [2]. Citing gerontologist Karl Pillemer's 30 Lessons for Living, he says not one of the very old people Pillemer interviewed wished they had earned more money, while nearly all wished they had spent more time with their kids, friends and family [2].

Regret as the compass, and the danger of extremes. Housel once asked Daniel Kahneman what trait helps people do well with money over time. The answer: "a well-calibrated sense of your future regret" [2]. Every financial decision can be framed that way: will I regret spending or not spending this? The catch is that people misjudge what they will regret, and it changes over a lifetime [2]. Housel is candid about his own case: if he died tomorrow he would feel great about the money he saved to protect his wife and kids, but at 80 he might wish he had lived a little more or given money away while he could see its effects [2]. The hurdle is the end of history illusion: people see how much they changed over the past 20 years but assume they won't change over the next 20 [2]. His practical answer is to avoid the extremes, the FIRE savers who put away 90 percent of their income hoping to retire at 28 and the YOLO crypto traders, because those carry the highest odds of regret. He estimates more than half of people sit at one extreme or the other, spending far more than they can afford or saving far more than they need [2].

When spending fills a hole. Housel argues that credit's deeper problem is not that it pulls consumption forward but that it lets people try to fill emotional holes with purchases: the car, then the watch, then a bigger house [2]. He cites Will Smith's reflection that when he was poor and depressed he still hoped money would fix things, but when he was rich and depressed he lost that hope [2]. Without easy credit, people might sooner ask what the real hole is, whether health, relationships or purpose, and fix that instead [2].

When money becomes identity. The danger, Housel says, comes when money becomes part of who you are. Then it is "a financial asset and a psychological liability," and a finish line that keeps moving starts to look like addiction [2]. Many people chase money to avoid the social pain of peers pulling ahead, a game no one can win because someone always has more; he describes someone in a 15,000-square-foot mansion fixating on a neighbour's 17,000-square-foot one [2]. He also warns about social debt: more money changes what others expect from you, and "fame restricts your freedom it does not increase your freedom" [2]. His advice is to "keep your identity small," borrowing from Paul Graham [2].

No single right answer. Housel opens his book with the idea that no one is crazy about money: "all behavior makes sense with enough information" [2]. Money habits reflect upbringing, age and era, and there is no single right way to manage money. It is more like taste in food or music than like arithmetic, so you have to find what works for you [2]. A plan that is right on paper for someone else can do real damage if it doesn't fit you [2]. His concluding distinction is between using money as a tool to live better and using it as a yardstick against others [2].

Laurie Santos: we adapt to purchases, but not to time and connection

Santos, the Yale cognitive scientist behind the course Psychology and the Good Life, brings the research on what spending actually does to happiness [3]. Her biggest lesson is how often our intuitions about what will make us happy are simply wrong [3]. One common misconception is that happiness comes from circumstances: more money, a new house, a new dress [3].

The income plateau. Santos describes a study by the late Daniel Kahneman, which she dates to around 2009. At low incomes, more money meant more positive emotion and less stress, but the curve levelled off at around $75,000 a year in the U.S. at the time, perhaps $100,000 to $110,000 today [3]. Beyond that, doubling or tripling income brought no more positive emotion and no less stress [3]. She is careful about the number: "$75,000, I think it's not like a kind of magic bullet number," but roughly the point "where like, a lot of your needs are taken care of. You got food shelter, you know, maybe like the teeny vacation a year or something. Like the stuff that you can additionally buy with more money is not going to bring you more happiness" [3]. Her summary: "does money matter for happiness? Yes, for sure. But it only matters up to a certain level. And that's the spot that we get wrong" [3].

Hedonic adaptation. One reason the curve flattens is that we get used to things. First-class flights and nice restaurants stop giving a boost: "if you do that over and over every day, it just comes your day to day experience. You don't get this kind of additional happiness boost from it" [3]. Higher salaries also often mean more work, less time and less social interaction [3]. Santos says this is something "even people of extreme wealth get wrong" [3]. She tells of therapist Clay Cockrell, who works with ultra-wealthy clients, most earning over $50 million, one of whom was in marital strife because he couldn't find a place to park the yacht his wife wanted [3]. Her antidote to adaptation is to imagine what you would feel if something you take for granted, like your car or your job, were suddenly gone [3].

Mel Robbins on saving that didn't deliver. Robbins, hosting, offers a confession that bears directly on the savings side of the debate. She calls it "one of the major mistakes I've made in my life" to think that "if I can buy something, or if I make more money, or if I just have this much in savings, that somehow it's going to just automatically boost happiness. And it's true. It hasn't" [3]. She also remembers real financial struggle, like her bank card bouncing at the gas station, and Santos agrees that money matters a great deal until basic needs are covered [3].

Buy time. Santos's most concrete spending advice draws on Harvard Business School researcher Ashley Whillans's work on time affluence, the feeling of having enough free time, and its opposite, time famine. Whillans found that frequently feeling time-starved is as big a hit to well-being as being unemployed [3]. One of the best uses of money, at any level of discretionary income, is buying back time, such as paying a neighbour's kid to mow the lawn or using a wash-and-fold service [3]. When Santos names the time she saved by buying a breakfast sandwich, she says, "you put value on your time," and explains that what money "is supposed to be for is to make our lives better and often what makes our lives better is free time" [3]. People who feel time-wealthy are also more social: primed with words about free time, people chatted more with others in a coffee shop and felt happier [3].

Spend on others, and on connection. Santos's strategies point spending toward people. Happy people spend more time around others, and spending time and money on others makes us happier, even though intuition and culture push the other way [3]. The benefit depends on the giving being voluntary; obligations you feel you can't refuse don't produce the same lift [3].

The Mel Robbins year-end episode: saving well so you can live, and enough

A fourth source adds two lived perspectives. Financial educator Tiffany Aliche argues that you don't need discipline, you need automation: have payroll split each paycheck into accounts before you ever see it, with amounts set by a money list of everything you spend [4]. She sorts expenses into fixed bills, usage-based costs and choice spending; if most money goes to the first two, you likely have an earning problem rather than a spending problem [4].

Aliche's husband died suddenly of an aneurysm two and a half years before the interview. Because they had done most things right financially, she says, she gets to just miss him rather than face ruin [4]. That is a strong argument for the protective side of saving. But the same loss taught her that all this learning is "not for money sake. It's for meaning sake" [4]. She had been the driven one, always chasing more, while her husband, who never earned more than $60,000 a year, liked their house and paid-off car and a life that was already good [4]. A year and a half before he died, she began stopping work at five to spend evenings with him, and she says "there's not much I regret other than I just wish he was here" [4]. She now spends much more time with family and friends and has learned that she has enough [4].

Robbins shares a listener's comment from a widow planning an expensive trip with her sons because, having focused only on saving, they missed making memories while her husband was alive [4]. Robbins reflects that "It makes you really stop and think why you work so hard if you never stop and allow yourself to actually enjoy it," and reminds listeners that "there's an invisible clock that none of us can see" [4]. Stanford neurosurgeon Jim Doty, in the same episode, warns against sacrificing everything to reach the top of a mountain only to stand there alone: "Our purpose in life is connection" [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

The real disagreement: what is the scarce resource? Perkins treats time and health as the scarce resources, so unspent money is wasted life: a dollar saved past what you need is an experience you never had [1]. Housel treats independence as the scarce resource, so a dollar saved is a dollar spent on freedom, and that freedom is itself the most fulfilling thing money buys [2]. They are measuring the value of an unspent dollar with different yardsticks. For Perkins it is a lost memory dividend; for Housel it is purchased control.

Where they disagree on regret. Perkins focuses on the regret of missed experiences and missed windows, like the trip you can no longer take at 65 [1]. Housel says he would feel great about his savings if he died tomorrow, because they protect his wife and kids, though he concedes that at 80 he might wish he had lived a little more or given money away while he could see its effects [2]. That concession is close to Perkins's argument about giving while alive [1]. Aliche's story holds both sides at once: saving protected her from ruin after her husband's death, and slowing down to spend time with him is what she doesn't regret [4].

Where they agree: against hoarding and against mindless spending. Housel explicitly warns against both extremes, the 90 percent savers and the YOLO spenders, and says more than half of people sit at one or the other [2]. Perkins says his book is not a call for reckless spending and asks readers to track net worth and plan for health costs [1]. Robbins's admission that more savings didn't automatically make her happier sits beside her memory of how crushing financial stress was [3]. None of them defends accumulation for its own sake.

Where they agree: experiences and people beat things. Perkins's experience points and memory dividends [1], Housel's claim that houses and vacations help mainly through the time they create with loved ones [2], Santos's finding that buying time and giving to others raise happiness while goods fade through adaptation [3], and Doty's reminder that connection is the point [4] all describe the same pattern. Housel's Pillemer example, that no one near the end wished they had earned more but nearly all wished for more time with family, supports Perkins directly [2].

Where Santos complicates Perkins. Santos's adaptation finding cuts against spending on repeated luxuries: a nicer car or first-class flights become the new normal [3]. Perkins's emphasis on one-off, time-limited experiences and memories partly sidesteps that, since a memory dividend is by definition something you return to rather than something you get used to [1]. But the sources don't test whether experiences also fade through adaptation, so that remains an open question.

Where Santos complicates Housel. Santos's income plateau suggests that beyond roughly the point where needs are met, more money doesn't lower stress or raise positive emotion [3]. Housel would likely agree, since he argues money works indirectly and that high earners can have less freedom [2]. But his defence of saving rests on independence, which the plateau research as described doesn't directly measure. Santos's time affluence research comes closest: feeling time-starved hurts as much as unemployment, and buying back time helps [3]. That is a form of independence purchased by spending, not saving.

Temperament. Housel insists there is no single right answer and that money is more like taste than arithmetic; what works depends on your history and personality [2]. Perkins offers a more prescriptive framework, with a target of zero [1]. A reader should treat Perkins's endpoint as a direction, not a rule, especially given Housel's point that people misjudge what they will regret [2].

Why It Works

Why spending on experiences can pay off. Experiences produce memory dividends that keep returning joy for years [1]. Their value depends on timing and health, so delay can destroy value rather than preserve it [1]. Much of their benefit comes from connection, which Santos identifies as one of the strongest routes to happiness, and which Housel identifies as the real reason houses and vacations help [2][3].

Why spending on stuff often doesn't. Hedonic adaptation turns luxuries into the baseline, so the boost disappears [3]. Buying can also be an attempt to fill an emotional hole, which financing makes easier and which doesn't fix the underlying problem of health, relationships or purpose [2]. And comparison never ends, since someone always has more, and even grows with wealth [2].

Why saving can pay off. Savings buy the ability to act on your own terms, which Housel says is the most fulfilling thing money provides, illustrated by Roosevelt's freely chosen schedule and his own chosen 80-hour weeks [2]. Savings protect family when catastrophe hits, as in Aliche's case [4]. Santos's research shows financial stress over basic needs crowds out happiness, so a cushion that removes that stress matters [3].

Why saving can fail. Past the point of need, more money doesn't lower stress or add positive emotion [3]. Fear-based over-saving delays experiences until health or opportunity has passed [1]. Chasing a moving number can turn money into identity, a psychological liability [2].

Why it's hard to calibrate. People mispredict their own future regret, and the end of history illusion makes them assume their preferences won't change [2]. Our intuitions about what will make us happy are often wrong [3].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Where the "spend now argument is strongest. It applies most to people whose basic needs are secure and who are saving well past what they will need, the just in case" savers Perkins describes [1], and to experiences with a closing window of health, age or relationships [1]. It also applies to buying time, which Santos says pays off at any level of discretionary income [3], and to helping loved ones while you are alive [1].

Where the save for freedom argument is strongest. It applies to anyone without a secure cushion, since Santos is clear that for people whose basic needs aren't met, money matters a great deal [3], and Robbins's bank card bouncing at the gas station shows how financial stress dominates life [3]. It applies to people with dependents who could face sudden loss, as Aliche did [4], and to people who value control over their work and time, like Housel [2].

Where both break down. Spending on repeated luxuries runs into adaptation [3]. Spending to fill emotional holes, or to keep up with others, doesn't work [2]. Saving to an ever-rising number becomes a trap [2]. And extremes on either end carry the highest odds of regret [2].

Limits of the evidence. The Perkins source is a short book summary, so the details of his calculations and safeguards aren't available here [1]. Santos's income figure is tied to one U.S. study and era, and she herself says it is not a magic number [3]. Much of the rest is personal story and reasoning rather than measurement [2][4]. For decisions about retirement, spending down assets or large gifts, it's worth talking to a qualified financial planner who can model your specific situation.

What To Do With It

1. Find your extreme. Ask whether you spend more than you can afford or save far more than you need; Housel estimates most people are at one end, and the extremes carry the most regret [2].

2. Secure the basics first. Build enough of a cushion that basic needs and emergencies aren't a constant source of stress, the point below which Santos says money clearly matters [3], and automate it so it doesn't depend on willpower, as Aliche advises [4].

3. Estimate what you actually need, then set a purpose for the rest. Replace a vague "just in case" target with a realistic calculation that includes health costs, as Perkins recommends [1].

4. Bucket your life by decade. List the experiences you want in each five-to-ten-year chunk, and move the ones that need health and energy earlier [1].

5. Spend on experiences with people. Favour trips, gatherings and shared time, the source of memory dividends and of the happiness Housel attributes to houses and vacations [1][2]. Remember that the flights and dinners may be the best part [2].

6. Buy back time. Pay for chores you dislike, like lawn mowing or laundry, and consciously name the time you saved [3].

7. Give while you are alive. Help children and others when it has the most impact rather than waiting for an inheritance [1], and make it voluntary so it carries the happiness boost Santos describes [3].

8. Before a purchase, ask what hole it fills. If it is status, comparison or a mood, Housel suggests fixing health, relationships or purpose directly instead [2]. For things you already own, fight adaptation by imagining them gone [3].

9. Run the regret test in both directions. Ask whether you'd regret spending or not spending, and check the answer from the viewpoint of yourself at 80, not just today, as Housel does [2].

10. Decide what "enough" is. Aliche's and Housel's stories both point to a moment when more stops mattering; naming it helps you stop chasing a moving finish line [2][4].

Sources

1. Die With Zero ·
2. Morgan Housel: Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness · Huberman Lab
3. The Science of Well-Being: Powerful Happiness Hacks That 5 Million People Are Using · The Mel Robbins Podcast
4. The Top Expert Advice of the Year: The Best of the Mel Robbins Podcast · The Mel Robbins Podcast