Review: Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dying with no money left, having spent it all on living. It sounds like an interesting concept – if money, a proxy for time, is a resource, can you optimize its use down to the last cent? The engineer in me was curious. I believed before reading this book that the only way to do that was to know for certain the date of your own death. After reading this book, I’m still of the same opinion. Perkins suggests that a person buy insurance and/or annuities to spend that last dollar, while doing any planned legacy giving while still alive, and while living life to the fullest. I don’t believe the insurance products he suggests all exist except in a theoretician’s mind, so practicality is a problem. As is risk. The author doesn’t always discuss additional risks taken while trying to limit a risk, like for instance your insurance company fails after you’ve paid for your annuity or insurance product. I found this disheartening in this book, as the author is an engineer who made his fortune in financial trading. I thought I found a kindred spirit.

And I did, in a way. The author begins the book describing his thinking being influenced by the book “Your Money or Your Life”, which explained how your time, or life energy, is traded for money, and you can think of your purchases as really being a chunk of your limited time on earth. He takes the concept to the conclusion that to be optimal, you should not waste time on making money that you won’t spend, hence the title of the book. But it ends up that the author isn’t done there. He continues down the optimization path by suggesting that life experiences and the memories they provide are what is really important in life, and to maximize these memories, you should spend on experiences while you can. For example, if you want to say you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, it’s best to do that when you are younger and abler than risk not being able to do it later in life when you may not be able to physically. This seemed to be the main thrust of the book, not quite what the title leads you to believe.

There were two things I didn’t like about the book. One was the bragging. The author is wealthy and enjoys spending his money. He threw himself a birthday party right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, flying friends to a Caribbean island and having a private concert. He is not psychologically opposed to spending. I tend to be, so I found this over-the-top example a bit too much. He used these examples to make his point, and he did.

Another thing I felt while reading this is what I would call “go-getter privilege”. There are risks that people who have generated wealth will take that other people will not. It is like there is a built-in insurance in the mind of a wealth generator, where they believe they can rebuild their wealth should any risk reduce their financial situation. I felt this strongly about the author, a multi-millionaire energy trader, as I read this book. It would be interesting to see if the author would have the same perspective if he was, say 20 years older and considering his wealth-making capabilities, facing age discrimination and no longer having his industry contacts, having followed his own advice and given away or spent most of his fortune. I think it would be quite a different book.

In summary, if you find yourself wealthy and want some logic behind upping your spending, this book is for you. For others, it is still a very interesting book, more a personal philosophy book than a finance book, making you think about your physical and financial capabilities at different times in your life and trying to make the best use of each.


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Review: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very readable story of the founding and early years of Nike. You get the feeling of listening to a scrappy small business owner making it work with negotiations, religiously dedicated employees, some shady characters, and a lot of luck. At the end, the author shares a story about being a billionaire in the same movie theater as a couple other billionaires, and given the scrappy upstart story you’ve read it doesn’t feel possible. Perhaps that’s the way the author feels as well, as if his company’s story is unreal. Note that this isn’t the kind of book that describes in detail “how I did it and how you can, too”. This is much more a story reporting the battles in growing a company, from keeping key employees to borrowing money after your bank dropped you as a customer. Again, the coverage is mostly on the start up and early years. The years where Nike becomes a fashion icon, where Nike promotes the biggest star athletes, where Nike uses child labor, those stories are left for other books. Here you learn how the company grew, in experience and values, so that these things were possible.

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Review: Six Figures in Sweatpants: A No-Bullsh*t, Practical Guide to Building a Freelance Career.

Six Figures in Sweatpants: A No-Bullsh*t, Practical Guide to Building a Freelance Career. by Ellen Hunter Gans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life

The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life by Petr Ludwig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this audiobook because it is about a topic I’ve read and thought a lot about, procrastination. I found the contents to be similar to many of the others that I’ve read, although I’d give this one higher marks for tying in research in the area. I found the voice of the author comforting, more like, say Malcolm Gladwell than a self-help book at times. I didn’t find this book as useful as many of the other reviewers. I believe this is because I listened to the audio instead of reading the book. I gather from many other reviews, as well as a perusal of Amazon’s “Look Inside” of this book, that there are many graphic elements in the book, like tables and illustrations, that were not described in the audio, as far as I can remember. While not dealing with those graphics made the audiobook quite short, which is often a good thing, I feel I may have missed out on the best aspect of the book. Good for a self-help book for dealing with procrastination and related mental issues, but probably better in a written format instead of audio.

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Review: A Son at the Front

A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this story of the home front, Paris, in World War I, we are introduced to the son who becomes a soldier, against his parents wishes. Those parents are divorced, the father an artist and the mother remarried to a rich banker. I found the portrayals of the two fathers the most interesting here. Wharton’s artist is a stereotypical artist of the working, non-genius type. He thinks about his work when he shouldn’t be, he wastes a lot of time, and he gets involved in situations to massage his ego. The banker father is played much more broadly. He is shown as caring and capable, though appears bumbling at times. The banker is there to learn from. I found the descriptions of the events in the city during wartime interesting in the kinds of things that went on, and what appears to be the same as normal times – most everything – as well as what is different – the topic of conversations is the war. It reminded me of the way much of what we talk about now in general conversation relates directly to COVID. Not a great book, but I enjoyed the historical aspects.

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Review: Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France

Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France by Richard Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this year of adjusted schedules, the long delayed Tour de France didn’t feel the same. Everything felt a bit off, from the crowds to the weather to the weariness of the riders. I have enjoyed watching this sports spectacle since I found how entertaining it could be in the post Lance era. It’s become my summer trip via TV. This is to say that I didn’t follow cycling in the year covered in this book. I’ve heard the names, but that’s about it. Having come at this story fresh, I really enjoyed it. The counterpoint of the always worried young American phenom paired up with the grizzled and unpredictable French veteran was very entertaining. You don’t often see this kind of dynamic. The American can’t trust the French guy, yet at points he must. While you can see how a race like the Tour can be as complex in moves as a chess game, this story added a new dynamic – in addition to the inter-team plotting and scheming, here you see some intra-team strategy. The author goes deep on explaining the events and the backgrounds of the decisions made by the riders. LeMond, the American, is presented sharing his inner thoughts on each day and each tactic in the campaign. For Hinault, you really get a couple of different thoughts on his actions and his reasons – what he was probably thinking, and what he says now – often not the same thing. LeMond comes across as unexperienced, which he was, but with the ability to think things through. Hinault comes across as wily.

The author includes details on other parts of the story, including team management and the tour in general. At times the story becomes a bit too repetitive, as the author approaches race tactics from slightly different viewpoints that come to the same conclusion. I found it a minor slog in the middle of the book that dissipated as the racing stories took over. As others have mentioned, the opening story concerning some gastric distress during the race, is unforgettable, for better or worse…


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Review: Ayn Rand for Beginners

Ayn Rand for Beginners by Andrew Bernstein
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was surprised and disappointed that this book, which I took to be illustrated similar to a graphic novel, was instead illustrated on every other page or so with what I would describe in most cases as clip art. I think the authors missed an opportunity to expand on the verbiage with additional information in the graphics. Otherwise, this was an interesting summary, mostly of Rand’s two biggest novels. Having just watched the movie version of both, I found the descriptions did add to what you could gleam from watching the movies. The book also lays out the basic concepts discussed by Rand in these and other writings. Overall, I found this a quick, though not always easy to read, overview of Rand’s ideas and a summary of her two major novels. Illustrations were unnecessary.

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