Early in his career, Perkins read the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robins and Joe Dominguez. It completely transformed his relationship with money and work. The key ideas:

• Every dollar you earn represents life energy spent to get that dollar
• So spending money is actually spending precious hours of your one life
• The goal is to maximize fulfillment from those hours, not to maximize dollars

This means not wasting life energy on meaningless purchases, but also not hoarding life energy (money) so long that you never get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Perkins started calculating the true hours of life energy each purchase cost and whether it was worth it. This allowed him to better optimize his life energy, not just his money.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Bill Perkins

Perkins acknowledges that actually dying with exactly zero dollars is impossible, since you can't predict your exact date of death. The key is to get close to zero, leaving just enough buffer to ensure you don't run out before you die. This takes careful planning. If you're too conservative and save too much, you'll sacrifice experiences and die with wealth unspent. But if you're too aggressive and spend too fast, you risk running out of money prematurely. The goal is to walk the fine line between these extremes - to spend as much as possible on experiences while still safeguarding your minimum needs.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Bill Perkins

Investment returns are important. But your savings rate - how much of your income you keep and invest - is far more important. Consider that:

• There's an upper limit to how much your investments can realistically return. Most people can't sustainably earn more than 8-12% per year.
• But there's no limit to how much you can save. If you save 50%+ of your income, you can become wealthy on even modest investment returns.
• You have far more control over your savings rate than your investment returns.

Yes, great investment returns are wonderful. But a high savings rate is in your control and has a huge impact on building wealth.

Section: 1, Chapter: 10

Author: Morgan Housel

It's easy to envy the returns of great investors. But most people overlook the hardships they endured. For example:

• Warren Buffett has seen his company stock decline 50%+ three times in his career
• Charlie Munger got divorced in the 1950s and calls that decade his "worst decade"
• Many fund managers have lost most of their assets after several bad years

Earning great returns seems exciting and glamorous. But in reality, it comes with immense volatility, drawdowns, and personal hardships. Appreciating the real cost of returns and treating that cost as a fee rather than a fine is crucial.

Section: 1, Chapter: 15

Author: Morgan Housel

The Wall Chart reveals the results of your mental shift from "more is better" to "enough is plenty." As you internalize the lessons of the steps through repeated practice, your expenses naturally stabilize at a level that reflects your true fulfillment, not endless desires.

You find yourself passing up a "great deal" on something you don't truly need because you realize your happiness doesn't depend on having more. A business suit on sale is just a chunk of your limited life energy. What seemed like a gain is now clearly a loss. The awareness itself, not forced frugality, realigns your spending with what matters most.

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Frugality has gotten a bad rap in modern America, seen as joyless penny-pinching. But the original definition is "enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of." Frugality doesn't mean deprivation but:

• Appreciating and fully using what you have, whether a little or a lot
• Engaging all your senses, mind and creativity to extract maximum enjoyment from minimum stuff
• Sharing resources as a way to bond with community rather than competing for status

True frugality means you're too busy enjoying life to bother with materialism.

Section: 1, Chapter: 6

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Everyone has different experiences with money based on their upbringing, circumstances, and place in history. This leads to very different beliefs and behaviors around money, even if on the surface they seem illogical or "crazy" to others. Two people can look at the same facts or event but interpret them very differently based on their own unique lens. Rather than judging, the key is to recognize that everyone's views make sense to them based on their personal experiences. What seems crazy to you might make perfect sense to me.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Morgan Housel

"Past A Certain Level Of Income, What You Need Is Just What Sits Below Your Ego."

We all have basic material needs. But beyond a certain income level, additional spending is more about ego than necessity. It's not about meeting your needs; it's about showing others how much you have. The key to building wealth is recognizing where that line is and being willing to suppress your ego.

The author uses the story of a janitor secretly amassing an $8 million portfolio to illustrate this point. Despite a modest income, the janitor became wealthy by living frugally and consistently investing his surplus. He suppressed ego and lived below his means.

Section: 1, Chapter: 10

Author: Morgan Housel

For each of your monthly spending categories, ask yourself monthly:

1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent?
2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?
3. How might this expenditure change if I didn't have to work for a living?

Mark each category with a plus, minus or zero to indicate whether you're fulfilled, aligned and aware of your post-job needs. Over time, this regular reflection will naturally shift your relationship with money as your internal guidance takes precedence over external pressures to spend.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Take your biggest risks when you have little to lose. This is often when you're young, single, healthy and flexible. You can afford to go out on a limb, knowing you have plenty of time to recover if things go south. As you age, your ability to bounce back shrinks. You have more responsibilities, more to lose. You can't afford to start over from scratch.

This is why Perkins urges frontloading your biggest risks. When you're low on resources but high on potential, make your boldest bets. As your wealth and commitments grow, shift to more conservative value protection. The goal is to always occupy the risk-reward sweet spot - enough upside to justify the gamble, but not so much downside that failure would be catastrophic.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Bill Perkins

The authors present a new definition of money to transform our relationship with it: Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for. Our life energy is all the hours of precious, limited time we have on Earth. So whenever we work for money, we are trading hours of our life.

This definition puts the focus on what money really costs us - our very life force. It prompts the question: Is this expense worth the hours of my finite life required to pay for it? With this awareness, we can start making more conscious choices aligned with our true values.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Wealth is hidden, not flaunted. It's the investments, cash, and assets you choose not to spend. Consider:

• A car or jewelry quickly converts wealth into something else. You had cash but now have a deprecating asset.
• Many rich people are living on the edge, spending most of what they earn. Their visible riches don't equal wealth.
• Wealth is financial assets that haven't yet been converted into the stuff you see.
• The only way to be wealthy is to not spend the money that you do have. It's not just the only way to accumulate wealth; it's the very definition of wealth.

True wealth is not about what you spend but what you don't spend. It's all the money you haven't converted into a depreciating asset.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Morgan Housel

Treasury bonds are the safest investment for your FI capital, offering:

• Guaranteed return of principal and interest by U.S. government
• Stable, predictable income you can calculate in advance
• Highest level of liquidity - easy to cash in if needed
• No commissions or fees if bought directly from Treasury
• Wide range of maturity dates to create an income "ladder"

The authors advise putting your core FI money in Treasuries before any other investment. You can count on them to deliver a steady income with no surprises.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

The purpose of this book is to transform your relationship with money by integrating your spending and saving with your values and purpose in life. It provides a 9-step program to help you shift from being a slave to money to being the master of it, able to think for yourself and achieve financial independence in a meaningful way. The program is about healing the split between your money and your life, so that life becomes one integrated whole.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Napoleon Hill introduces the fundamental idea that thoughts can be transformed into material riches. He illustrates this concept through the story of Edwin C. Barnes, who arrived penniless in Thomas Edison's laboratory but had an unwavering desire to become Edison's business partner.

Despite having no resources or connections, Barnes' burning desire and persistence eventually led him to achieve his goal. Hill argues that when one's dominating thoughts and desires are combined with faith and a definite plan, they can be transmuted into their physical equivalent. This principle forms the foundation of the book's philosophy on achieving success and wealth.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Napoleon Hill

Budgets, like diets, tend to fail because they try to force your behavior into preset categories based on how things "should" be. They focus on external rules rather than helping you change your internal relationship with money.

What does work is awareness gained through tracking - writing down every cent that comes into or goes out of your life. This is not deprivation but conscious spending. You get an accurate picture of your habits and can spot patterns to change - not overnight, but gradually and permanently as awareness grows. You put quality of life ahead of quantity of dollars.

Section: 1, Chapter: 3

Author: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

People often use mental budgets or "buckets" to constrain their spending - e.g., $200/month on dining out. But this heuristic can lead to irrational behavior.

In one study, subjects were told they were going to a play. Half were told they had recently spent $50 going to a basketball game (same bucket), while half were told they got a $50 parking ticket (different bucket). Subjects were then asked if they would still buy a ticket to the play.

Those who had gone to the game were less likely to buy play tickets, presumably because they felt they had already spent their entertainment budget for the month. But this makes no sense - the historical spending is a sunk cost and should be irrelevant to the play decision. Yet because it was categorized in the same mental bucket, it still affected their choice.

Section: 2, Chapter: 9

Author: Richard Thaler

True wealth is having control over your time. It provides:

• Freedom to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want
• The ability to say no to things you don't want to do
• Flexibility in the face of an uncertain and always-changing world
• The opportunity to wait for opportunities to come to you, rather than chasing every option

Money's greatest intrinsic value - and this is something that can't be overstated - is its ability to give you control over your time.

Section: 1, Chapter: 7

Author: Morgan Housel

"Sunk Costs - Anchoring Decisions To Past Efforts That Can't Be Refunded - Are A Devil In A World Where People Change Over Time"

The sunk cost fallacy is powerful. We tend to stick with jobs, investments, and relationships because of how much we've already put into them. We're anchored to past commitments.

But when the world changes, you have to be willing to change too. Economies evolve, values shift, and people grow in unforeseen ways. Embracing the idea that sunk costs should often be abandoned and that you'll change in unforeseeable ways is an important part of navigating life.

Section: 1, Chapter: 14

Author: Morgan Housel