Die With Zero Simulator | PMR Classic Books

The Perkins argument: money is stored life energy, and it only converts into experience while you still have the health to spend it. Saving is a transfer of dollars from one age to another, and every transfer into a decade where your vitality has collapsed loses most of its value on the way. This tool finds the age at which your accumulation should invert into decumulation, and prices what an over-large estate actually cost you in working years. It assumes a low-cost index core is already doing the compounding — this is a spending-schedule tool, not a portfolio strategy.

STEP 1 Your Timeline

Current age

Planned lifespan (age)

Perkins argues for planning to a realistic age, not an alarmist one. A longer plan pushes the crossover later.

Current net worth ($)

Annual savings while working ($)

Contributions stop at the crossover age the model finds. After that you draw down.

Annual spending in retirement ($, today's money)

Real return on the index core (% per year)

Return above inflation. Everything on this page is in today's dollars, so use a real figure.

STEP 2 Your Vitality Curve

Health decline starts at age

Before this age vitality is near its peak. After it, each additional year buys less experience per dollar.

Decline severity

Gentle Setting: 5 Steep

How fast vitality falls once the decline begins. A steep setting pulls the crossover age forward.

After-tax earnings rate ($ per working year)

What a year of your working life converts into after tax. This is what turns leftover dollars back into years.

STEP 3 Giving It Away

Amount earmarked for the kids ($)

When do they receive it?

Perkins' point is that the same dollars land on very different lives. Money at 30 buys a house deposit or a career change; at 60 it lands on someone already established.

Your age when the early gift is made

Only used for the early-gift option. Typically the age at which your children are 28-35.

OUTPUT 1 Net Worth vs. Vitality

Peak net worth crossover age

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Net worth Vitality (capacity to convert money into experience) Crossover age

	Value
Peak net worth
Vitality remaining at the peak
Years of high vitality left after the peak
Net worth at planned death

OUTPUT 2 The Memory Dividend

An experience bought at 35 is enjoyed once and then remembered for fifty years. Perkins calls that recurring recollection the memory dividend, and it compounds the way a reinvested coupon does. The chart contrasts the same dollars spent early against the same dollars deferred to age 80, when vitality has fallen far enough that most of the experience can no longer be bought at all.

Experience budget being compared ($)

Spent early (ages 25-45) Deferred to age 80

	Spent early	Deferred to 80
Lifetime experience units
Of which memory dividend
Utility per dollar spent

OUTPUT 3 Wealth Left on the Table

Unspent at death, beyond what you meant to give

—

Years of life energy that bought nothing

—

	Value
Estate at planned death
Intended bequest
Surplus above the intention
After-tax earnings rate
Working years the surplus represents

⚠️ Read this before acting on any of the above

This is a teaching model, not a plan. It uses a single fixed real return and a vitality curve you shape by hand. It cannot know your health, and it deliberately does not simulate market paths — so treat the crossover age as a direction of travel, not an appointment in a diary.

"Vitality" and "experience units" are invented scales. They exist to make a relative comparison legible — early dollars against late dollars — and carry no meaning in absolute terms. Nothing here is a measurement of your wellbeing.
The model ignores longevity risk, and that is its largest weakness. Spending to zero at your planned age is catastrophic if you live fifteen years past it. Perkins' own answer is to floor essential spending with an annuity first and only then run the surplus down — which is exactly the structure the Safety-First Floor Builder sizes. Use the two together; neither is complete alone.
Long-term care is not in this model. A single late-life care episode can consume the entire surplus this page calls waste. If you have no long-term care coverage, a large part of what looks like leftover wealth is in fact a self-insured reserve.
Taxes, means-tested benefits and gift rules are ignored. Real gifts, withdrawals and estates run into brackets, IRMAA and step-up in basis, none of which are modelled here.
This is a spending tool, not an investing tool. It says nothing about what you should own. The compounding it assumes comes from a low-cost broad index core; trying to fund an earlier crossover with concentrated bets adds the exact sequence risk a decumulation plan cannot absorb.

⏳ Die With Zero Simulator

STEP 1 Your Timeline

STEP 2 Your Vitality Curve

STEP 3 Giving It Away

OUTPUT 1 Net Worth vs. Vitality

OUTPUT 2 The Memory Dividend

OUTPUT 3 Wealth Left on the Table

📖 Read the book alongside the model

⚠️ Read this before acting on any of the above