75: What Legacy Do You Want to Leave?

When you think about legacy, do you think about inheritances or a last will and testament? Of course, those are all parts of planning a legacy, but we know that what you leave behind goes far beyond money and paperwork. Instead, we want to talk about the real legacy — the stuff that made you so special to the people you’ll leave behind.

For some, this may seem like a morbid topic or one that’s slightly depressing. But we think this episode of Worth It is important for two reasons:

1. You should be planning your legacy. It can’t wait.
2. You should be talking about death, because it makes life that much sweeter.

But enough of that. Let’s dig into what we talked about on this week’s episode.

 

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

00:48 Why thinking about a legacy isn’t just for old people

01:24 Why talking about death isn’t morbid

04:49 How Game of Thrones is connected to your legacy

07:42 The ways what you leave behind affects others

09:00 What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

12:27 Why you should think about how you want to be memorialized

16:00 The most important aspects of your legacy

16:26 What to write in your personal mementos journal

17:36 Why stories are so important

21:20 How to include letters in your legacy

Your Legacy is About More Than Money

In the financial planning world, a “legacy” is mostly about who gets your money after you die. This could be your kids, your grandkids, the owner of your favorite deli, or the nurse who helped take care of you in the hospital. The options are endless. Legacy planning also includes logistics about estate sales, executors of your estate (who’s in charge after you’re gone), and business succession plans. These are all very important in the scheme of things, and they should be taken into account with any sort of financial planning you do.

But that’s not all there is to legacy planning. Instead, we believe that things like your story, your hopes and dreams, your life lessons, and your keepsakes are also important to pass on. That’s why part of our Dream. Plan. Live process is to take our clients through legacy planning — with a twist.

 

Legacy Planning With the Dream. Plan. Live Process

Our Dream. Plan. Live process has a 6-part section for figuring out your legacy. This section includes thought exercises where you think about:

• Family. This could include things like guardianship for minor children, who you’re leaving assets (like houses, cars, etc.) to, and what your wishes are for pets, plants, that sort of thing. 
• Wealth. Yes, this includes the money you’ve accumulated and the divvying up of your overall net worth. That money has to go somewhere after you’re gone, so make sure you have a plan. In this part, we also talk about a business succession plan. Who do you want to take over your business? How do you want your customers or clients to be handled?
  
  
• Funeral. We ask clients to write down their wishes for their funeral, even though they always look at us like we’re crazy. But ask yourself: Do you want to be buried or cremated? Do you want a specific cemetery? Do you want a memorial or a funeral home ceremony? Also think about what you want your obituary to say and what picture you want to be shared — these are small details, but they can be hard for your heirs and family to deal with when they’re grieving. Plus, they’d probably pick that terrible picture of you before you lost all that weight.
  
  
• Charity. We talked about this in Episode 74 of the podcast, but ask yourself: Do you want to donate your car to charity, your possessions to your local homeless shelter, or maybe even thousands of dollars to your favorite cause? With the right planning, you can also set up donor-advised funds or even private foundations in your name… so you keep doing good long after you’re gone. 
• Online. Think about the digital space you occupy; where is that going when you die? For example, Dustin has a lot of books and audiobooks in his digital library, plus digital journals and lists he creates on Workflowy. He has a plan for passing these on to his children, do you? You can also think about who will control your social media accounts, websites or domains, and even your passwords (because passwords suck even more when the person who knows them is dead).
• Personal mementos. We think this is arguably the. most. important. part of your legacy. For this part of their legacy planning, we ask people to get a journal and write out things like: 

1. Favorite foods, colors, songs, etc.
2. The best travel destinations
3. What you learned about life
4. Stories to be remembered
5. Recipes
6. Letters to your loved ones

 

This can be an emotional activity, but it’s also empowering because you know that what’s most important to you will always be remembered. Plus, you’ll leave something more substantial than a few bucks. Because, as Danielle says, people always remember the stories most.

We really enjoyed this discussion, and we hope you did, too. But mostly we hope you really start thinking about your legacy and creating those personal mementos we talked about. Because you can’t control when or how you die, but you can control how well you’ve planned for it.

 

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

 

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Toujours Planning Quiz — are we a good fit for your financial planning needs?
• 100 Day Project
• Episode 74: 3 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Give Back & Make a Difference
• Workflowy
  

 

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