Death wakes people up, and the closer it awake and aware we become. When the end is near, we suddenly start thinking, What the hell am I doing? Why did I wait this long? Until then, most of us go through life as if we had all the time gets, the more in the world. (Page 2)

I had been using my savings account totally backwards-I was taking money away from my starving younger self to give to my future wealthier self! (Page 10)

Start actively thinking about the life experiences you'd like to have, and the number of times you'd like to have them. The experiences can be large or small, free or costly, charitable or hedonistic. But think about what you really want out of this life in terms of meaningful and memorable experiences. (Page 18)

Experiences keep on giving in the form of fulfillment from your memories. Over time, the ongoing memory dividend can sometimes add up to more experience points than the original experience provided. (Page 31)

Think about how you can actively enhance your memory dividends. Would it help you to take more photos of your experiences? To plan reunions with people youve shared good times with in the past? Compile a video or a photo album? (Page 37)

Now, the vast majority of people can only dream of retiring by the relatively young age of 38-yet for John, that retirement age was actually a few years too late. Why? Two reasons.First, he'll never get those years back that he spent just focusing on making money. He'll never be 30 again, and his children will never again be babies. Second, he made so much money that he now faces the Brewster's Millions problem: It's actually hard to spend his fortune fast enough. He already lives in a magnificent house and these days does pretty much what he wants. (Page 41)

Once you're in the habit of working for money to live, the thrill of making money exceeds the thrill of actually living. (Page 42)

There is just no way to get those hours back. If you die with $1 million left, that's $1 million of experiences you didn't have. And if you die with $50,00o left, well, that's $50,000 of experiences you didn't have. No way is that optimal. (Page 43)

The $130,000 windfall was definitely welcome-no question about that. "But it just would have been a lot more valuable a lot earlier," says Virginia, who is now 68. “I wasn't at the edge of poverty anymore-we weren't rich, but by this time we were living a comfortable lower-middle-class life." The money was now more like a nice bonus rather than the lifeline it would have been a decade or two earlier. (Page 82)

You always get more value out of money the before your health begins to inevitably decline. Bottom line? The 26-to-35 age range combines the best of all these considerations -old enough to be trusted with money, yet young enough to fully enjoy its benefits. (Page 87)

the key takeaway, I now realize, is to strike the right balance between spending on the present (and only on what you value) and saving smartly for the future. (Page 106)

It's crazy to save 20 percent of your income when you're young and have good reason to expect to earn much more in the next few years. (Page 108)

instead of saving 20 percent of your income throughout your working years, some people would be better off saving almost nothing in their early twenties (as we’ve discussed), then gradually ramping their saving rate during their late twenties and thirties as their income begins to rise. Then they should save even more than 20 up percent in their forties-and then slow down their savings so that eventually (as I explain in the next chapter) they actually start outspending their earnings. (Page 117)

Time buckets are a simple tool for discovering what you want your life to look like in broad strokes. Here's what I suggest you do. Draw a timeline of your life from now to the grave, then divide it into intervals of five or ten years. Each of those intervals -say, from age 30 to 40, or from 70 to 75-is a time bucket, which is just a random grouping of years.Then think about what key experiences-activities or events | -you definitely want to have during your lifetime. We all have dreams in life, but I have found that it's extremely helpful to actually write them all down in a list. (Page 142)

In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories. So what are you waiting for? (Page 192)