Asked whether he had a target number when he was coming up, Die with Zero author Bill Perkins says he wanted to be a millionaire before 30, but later concluded the age at which money stops converting into experiences matters more than any amount.
…a Miss America cookie cutter answer type thing that like people starting out do. They're not really thinking about it. It wasn't until later in life that I really was thinking about like, what does that mean? And what does the number mean? And is it even a number? Right. Is it really a date? When
you're talking about later in life, is that like in the last five years or that was when you were 32?
It was probably in the 30s, started really starting cementing the ideas of like the number doesn't matter. The age date matters. Like your net worth peak is actually a date, not a number. Just given the fact that your body is a decaying asset and its ability to convert that money into fulfillment and useful experiences declines. Net rate of decline starts approaching affinity as you get close to your deathbed. And so like more money means nothing at a certain point in your life. And so that slope matters more. And so that isn't when you're 20. That isn't when you're 30. So somewhere between 30 and 65, that slope's. Starts to really pick up such that more money doesn't really mean anything to you.
What was that moment that changed that where you realized there's a different way to live? Like, did you read something? Did you experience something where you're like, where you got smacked in the face and you're like, there's a better way, and this is where I'm going to carve out this new path.
Yeah, it wasn't like I, you know, I was on my horse on the road to Damascus and then I fell off it and got a vision. It was more like there were, there are many things. I read a book called Your Money or Your Life, which kind of introduced the concept that the best definition of money is something…
kind of is like that. It's sort of funny. Like the reason Sean and I aren't particularly investors, but we like having these investors on because it's sort of funny to see them take their rain man-like abilities to like analyze numbers, but they use it towards like other parts of life. And that's…