Non-Fungible Life Tokens
Your Most Valuable Asset
Time is the fire in which we burn
Reader beware: may induce mid-life crisis. Read at your own risk.
I’m here to tell you about the scarcest asset available.
No, it’s not Bitcoin.
It’s not gold.
It’s time.
Your time.
And I’ve decided to rebrand each hour of your remaining time on earth as a ‘Non-Fungible Life Token (NFLT)’.
Non-fungible = something unique which cannot be replicated.
You see, we’re all born with a finite - yet unknown - supply of NFLTs which diminishes over time, leaving each remaining life token more valuable than the last. Luckily, you can’t run out of tokens before you run out of life, giving you a guaranteed supply until the day you die.
The catch?
You weren’t born with a known expiry date, just a vague understanding as you age that you may well not be immortal after all (whilst still secretly thinking you are).
Imagine you carried around your life tokens in a pouch attached to your hip and you had to hand one over every hour, for whatever activity you decided to do. Whilst you won’t know how many tokens remain in your pouch, you will feel it getting lighter.
Spend an hour doomscrolling, that’s one less token.
Spend three hours braindead in front of a
WokeflixNetflix show you won’t even remember by next week, that’s three tokens.Spend eight hours doing a job you don’t enjoy, that’s eight less tokens.
Spend 40 years doing that same job, that’s 83,200 less tokens.
Apparently, an average teenager is estimated to spend 30,000 hours(!) on social media by age 30. That’s 30,000 less tokens to be spent during their youth. A youth that cannot be repeated or reclaimed. A youth frivolously given away to tech companies who’s currency is gormless attention. The attention of our children… but that’s another story!
There are no refunds with NFLTs.
You can't buy more.
So, we best attempt to spend them wisely!
My Non-Fungible Life Tokens
To illustrate the point, lets look at my likely amount of remaining NFLTs:
Whilst 84 years represents 735,840 tokens, I’ve already spent 289,080 of them!
Here’s how many tokens I have remaining until my ONS life expectancy:
84 years: 446,760 tokens
Well, that seems pretty decent…
However!
One is asleep for a third of one’s life - so lets subtract the tokens I’ll spend sleeping (this doesn’t account for my 10-month old daughter disturbing my slumber):
84 years: 297,840 tokens
Ah, and lets not forget work! Best reduce it further to account for work and see how much free time I have left (I’ve generously retired myself at 63):
84 years: 235,440 tokens
Now, one must also account for not being an average.
I may well be destined to have a shorter expiry date than I’d like. According to LV, I have a 4% chance of dying before age 65. Whilst I’ll take those odds, we all know people who do sadly go before that age.
So, I could have 446,760 life tokens left in my proverbial hip pouch, or I could have 150,043. Who knows.
All I know is my pouch is getting lighter, so the only reasonable thing to do is treat each day as a gift and spend my time intentionally on the things I enjoy with the people I love.
Speaking of people I love…
Family Non-Fungible Life Tokens
It’s important to note that it’s not only you who has a finite amount of life tokens, but so does everyone you know. Your friends, your family, your dog. Everyone.
And, if nature takes its course, those older than you will have less tokens remaining - sometimes substantially so.
Why do I mention this?
Because it’s easy to take those closest to us for granted, like they’ll be around forever. But they won’t be. We’re all destined to go sooner or later - as
says:
Unfortunately, you may have less life tokens left to spend with your parents/grandparents/loved ones than you think.
Life is finite and fickle and tomorrow is by no means guaranteed for any of us. Treating those you love ‘as casually as though they’ll live forever’ is leaving yourself open to regret as and when they eventually become ill/pass away.
So, please don’t wait around with your head in the sand, embrace the fact that everyone you love will die and do something about it. Be intentional. Be grateful for them. Spend time with them. Don’t begrudge them and let go of petty grievances (a hot coal destined for another burns the hand of the holder).
Yes. Family can be annoying. Friends can get on your nerves. It’s a fact of life that the closer you get to someone, the higher the chance of friction; however, if you’d mourn them at their funeral, then please don’t waste your - or their - finite existence on insignificant matters.
We’re all only here once and it’s mindbogglingly marvellous that our time on earth has miraculously overlapped with our loved ones - yet we often let insignificant follies degrade these very relationships.
A large part of this - to my mind anyway - is because people don’t spend enough time thinking about the unavoidable truth that their loved ones will die, as it’s all too easy not to. We rarely see death; however, in the not-so-distant past it was ever present. You only have to walk round an old graveyard to see many children died before their 5th birthday and many adults also died tragically young. Up until the 1960’s, life predominately began and ended in the family home. Death wasn’t hidden or taboo. It was a part of life. It’s only in our modern era that we’ve hidden this reality behind the sterile doors of hospitals and care homes.
Death is coming for all of us.
But you have to actively seek out life, otherwise you might wake up one day and realise you’ve wasted your precious few NFLTs on a sub-standard existence.
So, please spend your life tokens wisely as you won’t get another chance.
Want to make the most of your remaining life tokens?
Based on your answers to the questionnaire, I’ll send you a free, no obligation, video response with a personalised financial health check to let you know if you’re on track for your desired financial future.
Thanks for reading,
Tom Redmayne
Chartered Financial Planner
Supporting my work
I spent roughly three of my non-fungible life tokens on this article and you, hopefully, only spent about 0.05 of one reading it; so, please consider giving it a like (if you liked it) and a share (if you fancy it) - this helps the Substack algorithm find me and recommend me to new readers.
This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.
All views are my own.
Great piece to reframe things for the mind. I really like the application of non-fungible assets in this context.