17 What About Legacy in Retirement?
Norm had struggled more than he had expected when he first retired. But before too long, Norm had adjusted his sights from earning income, being productive, and accomplishing things, to something else. At first, Norm wasn’t quite sure what that something else was. Yet after a little while longer, Norm realized that he was looking at his life and activities from the standpoint of what impression they would leave on others, especially after he was gone. In retirement, Norm began living out his legacy. He only wondered how much richer and clearer his life might have been if he had learned to do so much earlier in life.
Legacy
Finding a guidestar to lead you through retirement can be a challenge. Early in life, that guidestar was education, then marriage and family, along with job and career. Faith and church may have been constants as well. Yet education, job, and career are all long over in retirement. Marriage and family may persist, although often on different, and sometimes distant, terms. That distance can become especially acute with the disability and demise of a spouse, and as adult children lead their own lives raising their children and focusing on their own family and career. Retirement can feel like losing guides, anchors, or foundations. Thus in retirement, you may wish to focus on your legacy, not in a selfish and prideful way but as a guiding focus, foundation, principle, and strategy. Legacy can imply several fruitful focuses, arrangements, and activities, including the ones addressed in the following paragraphs. For more on legacy, see the guide Help with Your Legacy. Let the perspective of your legacy guide your reflections, attitude, and actions in retirement. Living your retirement not so much for yourself but instead for the impression you leave on others closest and dearest to you can breathe new life into an otherwise peculiar and transitional time.
Memories
Creating and preserving memories, while helping family members and others close to you do so along with you, can be a good way to live in retirement. Your goal in spending time with grandchildren, for instance, needn’t be to provide their parent (your adult child) with daycare or to bore your grandchild with old tales. Your goal might well instead be to help your grandchild remember you as a warm, encouraging, and loving presence. Likewise, your goal in spending time with your adult children might not so much be to give them a piece of your mind or unsolicited advice but instead to remind them of fun times and funny events when they were growing up in your home. You might, for instance, deliberately gather and share old photographs or mementos that remind your adult children of their own grandparents, heritage, and childhood. You might likewise arrange to take new family portraits with children and grandchildren, and might convey sentimental gifts that children and grandchildren can treasure to remember you. You may do likewise with friends, neighbors, former work colleagues, and others in your broader circle. Remembering and preserving memories can be an encouraging strategy for retirement.
Character
In your retirement years, you may similarly wish to focus on exhibiting what you want family members to remember of your character. Your retirement years are not, as some retirees may imagine, about celebrating your accomplishments. Rather, retirement years are about sharing your spirit and character. When you have passed into the great beyond, your family members and friends won’t so much remember and appreciate your accomplishments as your character. Your legacy isn’t in your resume but in your spirit, the residue of hope, faith, depth, wisdom, and assurance with which you blessed others. Why not, then, focus your retirement years on sharing your spirit? The beauty of taking that approach isn’t solely in the fresh ways that you might find to encourage your family members and other closest acquaintances. The beauty of that approach is also that it doesn’t depend on your circumstances. You don’t have to be healthy, vibrant, active, and flourishing to share your hope, character, and spirit. Indeed, your worst circumstances might clarify your best character. Consider making your consistency, depth, sensitivity, and interest in others your guiding star in retirement, no matter your circumstances.
Account
You can play a role in shaping the account by which your family members, friends, acquaintances, and community remember you. You have a life story to share, including the inspirations and commitments that guided it. Reflect on your life story, shaping it to the message that you’d like to convey. Project in your words, wisdom, and life account the hope, faith, love, beauty, and sensitivity that you’d like your family members and friends to receive from you and by which you’d like them to remember you. Others may ask or invite you to share your life account, either formally or here and there in small conversations. Take those opportunities to do so, not out of pride but out of a witness to creation’s purpose and possibilities. Don’t leave your family members and friends despondent about you, your outlook, and your life. You may have had a hard life. But don’t burden them with a despairing or pessimistic account. Instead, bless them with an account of your perseverance, overcoming, and confidence in a glorious life beyond, under the rescue of the good Lord Jesus Christ. Give an account that will help others account for themselves honorably and eternally, too.
Leadership
Keep in mind your opportunity to lead others in positive directions, in your retirement years. Retirees have a life of experience, if nothing else. Retirees can also have substantial education, skill, insight, and management and organizational experience. Look for opportunities to share your wisdom, insight, and experience through volunteer leadership positions. Serving hands-on in charitable organizations can make great contributions. But serving on a charitable organization’s board, drawing on your professional, business, and life experience, can especially help those organizations. Charities, schools, libraries, museums, hospitals, business organizations, professional organizations, community foundations, and other community organizations all have volunteer boards. They also have subsidiary committees where much of the organization’s leadership work gets done. When you participate on those boards and committees, you share your legacy of hope, faith, insight, and wisdom. Don’t overlook your opportunities to serve your community and pursue your legacy through volunteer leadership activities.
Heirs
You may also be in a position in your retirement years to leave to your heirs a financial legacy. The proper legal way to do so is with a last will and testament, properly executed according to state law. Retain a qualified estate-planning attorney to assist you, located through word of mouth, state bar referral system, and online search and review, especially if you have an estate of significant value or any complexity. Generally, state laws allow you to choose your heirs, potentially subject to elective rights of a spouse. Choose your heirs thoughtfully, in a way that respects and confirms your legacy. Equal shares to children is generally wise, unless you have a strong and sound reason to distinguish among shares. You may choose to bless grandchildren only by blessing their parents (your adult children) or with direct and personal bequests. You may bequeath percentage shares of your estate, conveyed out of your estate in monetary distributions. But you may also precede estate shares with specific bequests of personal items or real estate, particularly those having sentimental or specially useful value to the heir receiving them. Choose your eldest adult child or other most-trusted family member as your personal representative to administer your estate, or a professional executor if better under your family circumstances. See more in the guide Help with Your Legacy.
Trusts
You may enhance your legacy by transferring assets, either while living or after your demise, into a trust or trusts for the beneficiaries who would not or could not handle the funds appropriately. If you are able, why not provide long-term for the needs of your family members who cannot provide for themselves? You may, for instance, establish a trust for the benefit of your mentally incompetent or financially irresponsible spouse or adult children, or minor grandchildren. You may alternatively wish to establish a trust for the benefit of a community or cause, or other group, charity, family, or individual. Trusts can be special tools to recognize special needs and circumstances both within your family and across your community. A trust that you establish and fund for a community interest may even bear your name or your family’s name, to further honor and preserve your legacy. Once again, see more in the guide Help with Your Legacy.
Foundation
If you have substantial funds to convey outside of providing for your own care, then a foundation may be another attractive option to pursue your legacy. Private foundations, often named after the family or corporation founding them, manage the substantial sum that the single donor conveys, through grants to charitable organizations over an extended period or indefinitely. The foundation’s board, typically controlled by the donor and donor’s family members or other trusted individuals whom the donor first appoints, determines the causes and charities to fund, consistent with the donor’s original intentions. See more in the guide Help with Your Legacy. Consult a qualified attorney regarding establishing your family foundation, if you have the substantial sums to donate and the charitable intent. Alternatively, you may donate smaller sums to your local community foundation, directing the foundation to carry out your charitable intent over time, out of an account in your name or your family’s name. Consider a foundation to carry forward your legacy.
Charities
You don’t need the complexity and administrative costs of a foundation to pursue your legacy through charitable donations, if you wish instead to make one-time donations rather than periodic donations indefinitely into the future. You may make donations to charitable organizations during your lifetime or through your will and last testament, often with tax advantages. Indeed, if you have a sizable tax-advantaged retirement account, and you must pay income tax on withdrawals from that account, you may find it financially advantageous to reduce those taxes through qualified charitable distributions directly to the charity. Tax deductions aside, charitable donations can aid your community, affinity populations, and special causes, while promoting your legacy. Generosity that relieves human suffering and promotes human flourishing is just the kind of legacy that many of us would like to leave behind, after caring responsibly for ourselves in retirement and for our families. The quality of your retirement can be in the legacy that you leave more so than in the comforts, excitements, and pleasures that you enjoy.
Memorial
For your family members, friends, church, and community, your memorial is a part of your legacy. You need not concern yourself with your funeral, burial, and memorial. If you prefer, your family members, friends, and church, and the funeral director whom your personal representative retains, will do so for you. Yet you may wish to make some provision in advance, particularly for a gravesite and marker in a family plot in relation to your spouse or other family members, for instance. You may even wish to request songs, verses or passages of scripture, eulogists, and a presiding pastor over your memorial, although again, others will make those provisions if you choose not to do so. Doing so, though, can be another way to encourage your family members, friends, and community in the direction of the commitments that you pursued in life, the character that you endeavored to reflect, and the Lord to whom you dedicated your life. Families intend memorials to reflect the departed one’s legacy. Thinking deeply about the legacy that you wish to leave, pursuing it in retirement, and reminding others of it through an appropriate memorial, can be good things to pursue in retirement.
Reflection
Have you given thought to the influence that you’ve had on your family members and others, and the impact that you are leaving behind? Would giving some focus to your legacy help you guide and enrich your retirement years? Can you, for instance, focus with family members a little more on recalling family memories and making new memories? Can you better reflect, in your retirement years, the character by which you’d like your family members and friends to remember you? Have you executed a will and last testament blessing your heirs with inheritances? Do you need to place funds in trust to provide for minor or disabled family members who cannot provide for themselves? Do you have the means to establish a family foundation to carry your legacy forward through charitable donations? Would making charitable donations now or in your will for after your demise build your legacy for community care and service? Do you have any interest in choosing your burial site and marker, to honor your family heritage? Would your spouse or other personal representative appreciate your input on your memorial service? Do you, for instance, have a family member or friend, or a presiding pastor, whom you’d like to honor by asking them to give your eulogy?
Key Points
Reflecting on your legacy can be a good way to enrich retirement years.
Recalling and making new memories can be a good legacy strategy.
In retirement years, reflect the character you wish others to remember.
Share the account by which you want others to remember you.
Consider taking volunteer leadership posts to share your values.
Arrange in retirement years to bless your heirs with inheritances.
Place funds in trust for heirs who are unable to manage the funds.
Consider funding a foundation to carry on your legacy through charity.
Charitable donations during retirement or by will can build legacy.
Providing for your burial and memorial helps your family with legacy.