Legacy Plan Checklist.

Ensure Family Culture and Communication

Active family culture, ongoing communication, and documented history can benefit members in many ways. Certain aspects may bring the family closer together, such as ongoing traditions and shared experiences. Other aspects may provide perspective and background such as a health history resource and family history. Heirlooms can act as a physical presence of family culture, being a tangible reminder of the path taken to arrive at the present. Collectively culture and history can help family members define shared principles, values and priorities. Regular family meetings are useful for maintaining successful communication, family alignment, and to implement planning for the achievement of shared goals. Keep in mind the primary reason family legacies fail is due to lack of communication.

Check Spousal Alignment

Early dialogue between partners helps cultivate alignment around common values and goals, prepares for unexpected occurrences, and increases the chances of successful future family meetings.

Cultivate Financial Competency

Empowering family members with knowledge of how to build, maintain, and pass assets is an important skill set. Typical insights include how assets were built, how to build more, and how to maintain them. Useful ideas can potentially help extend the use of assets over multiple lifetimes, cultivate wealth where previously only opportunity had existed, and pass wealth on for the stewardship of future generations.

Focus on Community Support

Community involvement, service, and volunteering can form strong social bonds, provide a sense of purpose, and result in the permanent betterment of the community. By selecting a cause aligned with personal values, then identifying skills and knowledge you can offer, opportunities to assist the community become clearer. Setting an example for family and neighbors can often influence others to do the same, and in time, benefit everyone.

Focus on Natural World Support

As families gain the benefit of available time, members often seek deeper meaning by supporting the natural world. Callings to environmental stewardship vary by individual and family. Whether addressing pets, wild animals, water, land, food, people, services or products, it remains important to take responsibility for the environmental quality shared by all. Stewardship via restoration and protection, scientific research, civic action, and individual daily practice, can make a difference. Multi-generational involvement can then be an exceptionally powerful way to help the natural world, while also bringing meaningful satisfaction to family members' lives.

Address Housing Needs

Implementing creative solutions for housing, one of the larger lifetime expenses for each family member, can effectively increase benefits and wealth for a family over generations. Similar to cultivating assets, reducing this lifetime liability has the potential to shift income instead to assets.

Address Education Needs

Planning ahead and implementing creative solutions for each family member's education needs has potential benefit for both the individual and the family. Scholarships and endowments can also support education for others.

Address Healthcare Needs

Each family member has necessary healthcare expenses to address and mitigate throughout a lifetime. With advanced planning the large typical scale of the expense of healthcare can potentially be decreased. Support can also be generated for healthcare organizations and medical focus areas to improve access to care and treatment quality.

Plan for Living Expenses

Standard monthly expenses need to be addressed throughout each lifetime. Reducing and planning for these necessary lifetime liabilities has the potential to improve lifestyle over the long term while also further extending resources.