What will be your legacy?
As we get older, many of us start to think about how we’ll be remembered by those left behind. That may not be the best way to ensure that you live life well and leave loved ones in good stead.
When we’re young, life seems slow moving – the days are long and the world is rich. As we get older, this starts to change and it feels like we’re running short of time, and consequently we tend to rush to get more things done.
I’m 48 years old now, and it does feel like I’m on the other side of the proverbial mountain. Until my late 30s or early 40s, I was climbing the mountain, like all of us. Trying to find my identity and how I fit into the world.
Then in my early 40s, I had the cliched mid-life crisis. It lasted a long time. For me, it meant questioning much of what I’d learned early in life, and the decisions that I’d made since.
Coming out of that and recognizing that I’m not climbing the mountain of life anymore, and maybe descending it, thoughts invariably turned to my own mortality. Ernst Becker in his famous 1973 book, The Denial of Death, suggested that an individual’s character is formed around the process of denying their own mortality, and that this denial is necessary to function in the world.
That seems a stretch to me, though there’s no doubt that many fear death, especially as they age. I sense that fear in my parents, making it difficult to talk about death and the issues surrounding it, including financial affairs.
The issues with legacy
A recognition that we won’t be around forever can lead to thoughts about the purpose of our lives and what we’ll leave behind. Our legacy, so to speak.
When thinking about legacy, the first thought for me is of rich people leaving buildings and monuments in their names. A few years ago, I remember reading of the CEO of a listed company donating money to my university alma mater in Adelaide, and getting a building named after him, and I thought, ‘you pompous so and so’.
The problem with legacy is deeper, though. The building with the CEO’s name on it won’t last forever and there’ll probably be wealthier donors at some point whose names will replace his on that building.
The deeper reality is that very few of us will be remembered after our deaths. By family and friends, sure. Outside of that, not so much.
After all, there are 8.2 billion people alive today, and around 117 billion who’ve lived and died over the past 4.5 billion years of earth’s existence. We’re but a speck in the scheme of things.
If not legacy, then what?
What should we aim for as we age, then?
New York Times columnist David Brooks in his book, The Second Mountain, suggests during the first half of our lives, we pursue largely self-interested goals: career wins, high status, buying nice things. He believes the second half of our lives should be about family, vocation, philosophy, and community. Put simply, it should involve connecting with close ones and helping others.
Connection and relationships are important, yet they may not be all there is to it.
A different framework for finding purpose in life comes from financial coach, George Kinder, in his book, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity. Kinder says financial advisers should ask their clients three questions to help them find their life goals, and the questions are paraphrased here:
- If you just won $10 million, how would you change your life?
- If you found out you have just five years to live, but you’re in good health, what would you do?
- If you’re told today that you have only 24 hours to live, what regrets would you have about your life?
I like the second question most. The problem with it is that the answer likely changes with age. In my 20s and much of my 30s, my answer would have included: travel the world, meet as many people as possible, and go to some of the world’s great sporting events.
Later, the answer would have been different and including things such as building a business to potentially pass onto my children.
Now, the answer would be far more mundane: to spend as much time with my family, raise my children to be good people, build deeper relationships with friends, pursue work and hobbies that mean something to me, and leave enough assets and income for my family to get by after I pass.
The answer to Kinder’s second question will be different for each of us.
There’s another way to think about goals for the second half of life. I heard it once, from where I’m unsure, that we leave parts of ourselves with those we’re close too. For instance, we teach values to our children, who pass it onto their children, who then pass it onto theirs. Or we influence friends in ways that they pass onto others, who spread it further and onto the next generation, and so forth. In other words, parts of us live on through generations.
The three frameworks for thinking about how to live as we age hint at something else. Most of us spend our lives obsessed with the future: what shape our finances will be in, what assets we’ll own, what career and work we’ll have, and what our world will be like.
Yet, perhaps we need to obsess less about the future and more about the present. Worrying less about what our legacy will be, and more about connecting better with people in the here and now.
Yes, some planning is warranted and prudent. Wills, estate planning, and the like. And we write a lot about these topics in our newsletter. But they’re only a small part of how we’ll be remembered once we’re gone.
