Making Your Legacy Count for the Ones You Love

In recent years, you may have heard more about the idea of leaving a legacy, but the concept is nothing new, perhaps just getting more attention because of the environment we’ve been in. When the idea of legacy is discussed, it is often done in the context of what you’ve put in place from a financial and legal standpoint to share what you’ve built with your loved ones. While those items are an extremely important part of legacy planning, there is more to it than that. If you are a regular follower of this newsletter, you know that each year I try to promote the Financial Empowerment Conference that is hosted by Turner Chapel AME Church. This year the focus of the conference is in line with legacy planning as we will discuss “ Building Wealth Across Generations ”. For anyone who is interested, you can get more information as well as register for the conference, held on March 3-4, 2023,and plan attend either in-person or virtually using this link. With the topic of legacy being prominent, this issue of the newsletter is dedicated to painting a fuller picture of what is involved in building and sharing the type of legacy that will be meaningful to the people you care about the most.

Understanding the Power of Your Legacy
Because of the way legacy is discussed, many people undervalue how the life they have lived can serve others long after they are gone. If your legacy were only about the money and assets you’ve accumulated, that type of thinking wouldn’t necessarily be too far off the mark for a lot of people. However, while your financial standing is a part of your legacy, it encompasses so much more than just that. All of the life experiences you’ve had and knowledge you’ve gained are also an important part of your legacy that very well may be worth sharing with others. We may not put as much stock in those things because our culture places more emphasis on the material things we can see and the things we can keep score with, but it very well could be that being able to share something you have been through with the world could change the course of another person’s life. When it comes to money, if you are able to pass that along to others when you no longer can use it or need it, that too can elevate the circumstances of the people and causes you care about. To be clear, when your life has ended, you will leave a legacy. The question is what type of legacy will it be?

Establishing a Legacy that Can Make an Impact
If you agree that your life story and the fruits it has borne has power, and you want to exercise that power for good, it is important to be intentional about building a life that will allow the legacy you leave to be one of positive impact. This newsletter is dedicated to the idea of good stewardship, a concept that like legacy is often viewed purely from a financial point of view. Stewardship, however, speaks to the way you manage anything that you are responsible for. With that in mind, we all should seek to be good stewards over all aspects of our lives, whether that is with our finances, our personal and professional lives, or how we engage with the community around us. If we live our lives in that way and make decisions accordingly, we will be well on our way to establishing a legacy that we can be proud of and that will serve to make life better for others. Taking that strategic approach is important, and once the strategy has been established, we then must take the tactical actions that will bring to life what we have in mind. In that this newsletter is centered on personal finance, some of the important tactics you can use include things like managing your cash flow, minimizing unnecessary debt, protecting yourself from the unexpected with savings and insurance, making wise decisions to preserve and protect your assets from depletion by taxes and other forces, and investing to build long-term wealth. Doing those things, regardless of how much or little money you make, will position your legacy for a more positive impact.

Formalizing Your Legacy
You can do all of the things needed to establish a legacy that can make great impact, but if you don’t put the right structures in place, what you envision for your legacy may not come to pass as you intended. It is most important that you document what you’ve established, both from the financial side and the personal side, and what your wishes are for how those things can be carried forward without you. For the material things you’ve accumulated over your lifetime, your estate plan provides legal structure to identify what you’ve accumulated and explain what you want to be done with it. As we’ve seen with many high-profile celebrities who had large financial legacies, not putting those structures in place creates chaos, bad feelings, and ultimately reduces the value of what you’ve accumulated because the courts have to get involved, and that costs money. It is so much more effective to do the necessary pre-planning that minimizes court involvement, and when the courts do have to get involved, everything has already been outlined for them. For the other critical aspects of your life, outside of the material, documenting our knowledge, experiences, and traditions can make a tremendous impact on the people you care for, and those things very well could hold more intrinsic value to them than anything you could leave them financially. We may struggle to figure out how to capture those types of things, but thankfully, one of the panelists participating in the previously mentioned Financial Empowerment Conference, Kenneth Kelly, has created an online tool that can help you organize those things that are not as easy to document.

Communicating Your Legacy
If you have done all of the above but miss out on this last item, you may miss out on ensuring you leave the legacy you want. If we understand that our legacy isn’t for us, but instead for others, we cannot assume those people know what and how we want our legacy to be carried forward. When it comes to money issues, we often tend to be wary of sharing information with others, even our loved ones. While it does make sense to keep our financial matters private, we can still share enough information that will allow the ones we love to have enough working knowledge of our wishes that they can act in accordance with those wishes. While we may be less reluctant to share about other aspects of our lives with loved ones, we may take it for granted that they know certain things and think we don’t have to communicate that with them. That approach leaves too much to chance. Whether it is an amazing family recipe, an inspiring story, or a closely held value, communicating that to the people you want to know about it and take with them is the best way to keep that piece of your legacy alive. And that is ultimately, what legacy planning is about: keeping alive the things that you’ve lived and worked for so that your life leaves a lasting imprint into the future.

Stewardship Emphasis
We only get this one life to live, but if we use wisdom and the tools available, the good that was done in that life can last for generations.

The Empowerment Channel |Volume CCX | Dedicated to Promoting Financial Education through Stewardship