If your legacy is made only of money, you are morally bankrupt.

–Lon Simpson, teacher, woodworker extraordinaire

You create your legacy every day of your life. Are you doing it intentionally? It isn't as rewarding when you do it accidentally. Think of your legacy as your trace in the world. Leaving a legacy after your death won't make you any friends today nor increase the love of those around you now. Start today to experience the benefit of your mark on the world. When you intentionally create your legacy you become conscious of the impact you have on the world. Your legacy resides in your loved ones and your shared experiences. Your legacy exists in your work. And your legacy certainly prospers in your charitable giving and volunteering.

Wait, you say, I though a legacy was by definition something that you leave behind when you die. Well sure. Technically, it has meant something like that:

Legacy
1. money or property left to someone by a will; bequest.
2. anything handed down from, or as from, an ancestor to a descendant.
Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition, 1962

But language changes with us as we change. And this definition needs updating. Why wait until you die? After all when we retire, we often live 10, 20, 30 or more years. Living into our 80's and 90's is commonplace. Many have whole careers after they formally ‘retire'. And if you are younger than 50, do you want to wait fifty years to create a legacy? The world needs you now. So let's change the definition, stretch it to include the many ways we impact the world.

It is far easier to shape your legacy when you are alive.

Fortunately, in living longer, working in a variety of capacities, we can leave a variety of legacies. A legacy may even be something different, such as the contribution of a process or event.

If you had a million dollars to give away, what would you give it to? If you had twenty or fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to give away every year, what would you do with it? What difference would you make in the world?

Very often this line of questioning gets the juices flowing. One retired teacher was living a fun life in retirement. Then she started to plan. She discovered that she could easily give away $25,000 per year, starting immediately and then more each year. Fun? More than fun. Exciting, passionate living! She smiles so big her cheeks dimple.

She started by contributing money to scholarship funds set up by friends who had also been teachers. Then she set up her own scholarship. After that, she donated money to the foundation of a national organization to pay for a project that she helped to design. It would help that organization grow and develop. Now she figures out ways to make gifts that stimulate others to make a difference.

Viewed from the standpoint of “avoiding taxes”, estate and wealth planning feels, in its best moments, pretty dull. Viewed as a process to create money that you can apply to the causes you are engaged in, estate and wealth planning can be positively electrifying — exciting beyond belief. The same process, just a different perspective.

Again and again we experience the excitement of people so engaged in the possibilities, so interested in what they can create that they forget pains, aches and troubles. Time flies when you are having fun. How would you like to spend your days, the rest of your life?

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, once suggested: “Feed your opportunities, starve your problems.” It is imprudent to avoid problems altogether, of course, lest they fester. At the same time, addressing problems gets much easier when you start with the right mindset and more resources. We hope to help mobilize a more important personal asset than your money: your enthusiasm and your energy. Planning can catalyze the best of you, your family and your aspirations. It gives you the means and the motivation to make the difference you want to make. Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone. Start today.