How to plan your personal legacy

Wealth is to help others and not destroy the intended beneficiaries.

- JOE FERRERIA

When people ask me what legacies are all about, I would normally respond with a question. I ask them if they still remember the name of their great-, great-, great-grandfather?

Chances are, no one could remember his name.

I then explain to them that the reason they cannot is because their great-great-great-grandfather never left them any money or did not do anything significant that will make them remember him forever.

This is what legacy planning is all about. It's answering the question of how people will remember you through the passage of time.

We go through the learning years, prepare for business, a profession, or to work as an employee in an enterprise.

Through our working years, we focus on building a family, buying a home, sending the kids to school, and with hope, accumulating enough for us to have a peaceful and financially stable retirement.

When we step into our senior years, the kids would have gone through school, gotten married, and are starting to have children. They go off and live their own individual lives which leaves you with an empty nest.