The Rarest Asset You'll Ever Own Isn't in Your Portfolio

Why Temporal Scarcity Makes Your Life Worth Investing In

If you’ve ever stared at your investment account and thought, “Nice! But is something missing?”, you’re right. Your most precious asset isn’t a stock, a bond, or a post-dividend REIT. It’s you. Specifically, it’s your one, brief, biologically fragile, undeniably temporary (*sigh*) life. And thanks to a concept in psychology known as temporal scarcity, it might be more valuable than you realize.

Temporal scarcity is the phenomenon that explains why time feels more meaningful as it diminishes. It’s the reason we cry at graduation speeches and get suddenly philosophical on birthdays that end in zeros. It’s also why a 95-year-old staring down their final sunrise often has more clarity than a 35-year-old staring down their third cold brew. When time is limited, our choices matter more. In investment terms, we stop chasing shiny distractions and start allocating attention to what yields real, soul-level returns.

Psychologist Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory builds on this. Her research shows that as people perceive their time as finite, they shift their priorities: less novelty, more meaning; fewer networking events, more calls to Mom. This reallocation isn’t regression—it’s wisdom. It’s a natural rebalancing of your emotional portfolio. It’s a tactic your Conscious Wealth financial planner would be proud of: cut the noise, invest in what lasts.

But here’s the trick: you don’t have to wait until your personal hourglass is down to its final grains to start valuing your time like the rare asset it is. Contemplating our finitude earlier yields a compounding effect—just like any good investment. When you start treating life as the Limited Time Only situation that it is, you start living with more urgency and intention. And when you live with intention, you stop wasting capital (emotional, energetic, and actual). It’s for this reason I’m a fan of counting how many Mondays we have left. As of this week I have 1,751 to live (if I play my cards right). This countdown timer motivates me to value the relentless countdown timer of the calendar and take more purposeful action on my dreams, plans, goals, and goofy moments that I believe make a life worth living.

Vitality—your health, attention, curiosity—is like early-stage equity. It’s undervalued when abundant, and devastatingly irreplaceable when gone. So yes, buy low! Invest early! Stretch, sleep, see your friends. Learn to make risotto. Get that weird mole checked out. These may not be in the S&P 500, but they offer the kind of ROI that matters when you zoom out far enough to see how many Mondays you’ve endured so far and how many Mondays you might just have left.

In markets, scarcity drives demand. In life, scarcity drives clarity. When you recognize time as scarce, you start treating it as sacred—and suddenly, you’re a better steward not just of your finances, but of your days… of your moments. Money, after all, can buy comfort, freedom, and the occasional 11 a.m. Wednesday massage. But it can’t buy time. The only thing that can earn more time—or at least more value per unit of it—is how you choose to spend it.

So next time you review your assets, consider your life among them. Not just as a resource to optimize, but as a portfolio to honor. It’s rare. It’s non-renewable. And it’s the only investment that appreciates most when you give it your full attention.

Are you with me in not just counting your money… but also your Mondays? Here’s an easy mortality math calculator.

Is it time to start living like you mean it?

‍