Secure Your Future & Legacy: 12 Steps to Lasting Impact

With every passing year, I become more acutely aware of my mortality (or maybe it’s just the new wrinkles). Although I never expected to spend my 30s thinking about my death, having children and planning for a stable financial future has forced me to do just that.

If you’re like me, you may think about what you would leave behind if you were to die tomorrow. This might mean buying life insurance to cover the mortgage, writing a will for your assets, and naming guardians for your children.

But what you leave behind doesn’t just include the stuff. Your legacy represents everything you spent your life creating, including your estate and the foundation and lessons you build with those you love.

Here’s a look at how and why to build a lasting legacy for yourself, both financially and beyond.

In this article

• Leaving a financial legacy: 7 things you can do
• Leaving a personal legacy: 5 things you can do
• The bottom line on leaving a lasting legacy

Leaving a financial legacy: 7 things you can do

If you have a spouse, children, or others who depend on you, you’re probably concerned with the financial legacy you will leave. Here are seven things you can do to create a financial legacy that will last long after you’re gone.

1. Get a handle on your finances

By taking charge of your household finances today, you set up many areas of your life for success. You can avoid (or get out of) debt and adequately save for emergencies, plan for retirement, invest, and more.

Getting a handle on your finances now also helps you to leave a healthy financial legacy for your loved ones. It reduces the chances that you will leave your family with debt that could impact them for years. It also teaches your children sustainable lessons about money.

One place to start is with your monthly household expenses. For instance, there are many easy ways to lower your bills. Doing so frees up those funds for other uses and reduces the amount of money your family would need to survive without you.

2. Create a will (if you haven’t already)

Creating a will can feel uncomfortable and perhaps a bit morbid, but is an essential step in preparing for all circumstances.

The will that you (and your spouse) create can specify who would be responsible for minor children, where your assets should go, how you would want life insurance proceeds to be allocated, and more.

As dreaded as creating a will may be for many, this simple end-of-life document can help you avoid losing sleep over money and let you rest easy knowing that your family is provided for no matter what.

3. Teach your children financial responsibility

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime, right?

Although modeling responsible financial behavior is important for your kids to see, sitting down and teaching them money truths not taught in school — even from a very early age — sets them up for lifelong success. 

After all, our children and their values, successes, and virtues are representative of us as parents. What better financial legacy to leave than to raise children who are independent and responsible with their money?

4. Help your kids build their credit

Growing up, credit scores (and the importance thereof) weren’t really talked about. It wasn’t until I was applying for undergraduate loans that I realized just how important those three numbers are in adulthood.

Helping your kids build their credit as early as possible can give them a leg up on the future. This means teaching them what credit is, how to build a strong credit history, and what to avoid in terms of debt. If you want to help them establish their credit history and begin building a good score, you can do things like adding them as an authorized user on your existing account(s), even when they are young teenagers.

5. Build your retirement savings

Nearly half of families today have no retirement savings at all. A significant portion of the rest has far less retirement savings than they will actually need to survive after their career ends (or they will simply work until they die).

Focus now on building a healthy retirement portfolio so you can enjoy a financially independent life in your later years. This helps you avoid becoming a drain on your loved ones while also allowing you the freedom to live out your best years as you see fit.

Platforms like Betterment make it easy to save for the future and invest those funds in the stock market, even if you don’t know where to start. You can also automate those savings so it’s a hands-off process, building a portfolio that may grow over time.

6. Apply for a life insurance policy

Applying for life insurance is an important part of the estate planning process. If you were to die tomorrow, how would your family survive financially? Would they struggle to balance the mortgage, utilities, grocery bills, childcare, and more in your absence? If so, life insurance is a kind and valuable product to help protect them.

By buying a life insurance policy, you establish a financial safety net for your loved ones if the worst were to happen. This can help pay off debt or just cover basic expenses and provide for the future (think college tuition, weddings, or charitable causes).

To make the process simple and painless, you may want to shop for the best life insurance through a company like Bestow, which offers affordable term coverage in minutes with no medical exam requirement.