The Evolution of Legacies in Planning for the Future
My career is all about helping families learn how to protect themselves and plan for the future. That includes exploring all the ways, including using new technologies when appropriate, to help individuals and families do just that. The obvious areas for planning for future financial security include savings, investing for retirement and life insurance, which I intend to post about soon, but to the list of subjects to be considered in planning for the future, I would also suggest including legacy planning.
The whole idea of building a lasting legacy has changed. The past few years have seen a radical change in the idea of legacy. In the coming years, those changes are going to accelerate, transforming legacy planning into something earlier generations wouldn’t even be able to recognize.
For many the idea of planning for a permanent “legacy” is something that relates only to wealthy people. When you think of those who left legacies it was in terms of buildings and foundations that bear their names. And for a very long time, that was pretty much the whole story. While that type of legacy planning certainly still occurs, what’s also a reality is that all of us should be thinking of how we are going to build our legacies. Because now how we are remembered, not just by the friends and family who knew us personally, but also for generations to come is possible for just about anyone. And I think everyone should consider how he or she would want successive generations to know about who they were, what sort of values they held and what was important to them.
There are many parts to a legacy: the financial side that includes bequests through wills and trusts. And now there’s the digital footprint that’s planned specifically for posterity. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to concentrate on digital legacy building.
In this age where the vast majority of us have a digital footprint, we are well on the way to creating content that will become part of our online legacy. The idea that what we post has the capacity to be live long after we are is exciting—and a bit scary for those of us who have posted digital mementos of some of our wilder moments. Our descendants for generations to come will be able to have a window into our lives that before now has been limited to very few families. In fact, according to new-media entrepreneur and chief strategy officer at Mashable, Adam Ostrow, in his 2011 Ted Talk, individuals with comprehensive online social media presences are already building huge personal archives that will be accessible after they die. Ostrow sees a possibility for machines to be able to use an algorithm that analyzes an entire lifetime of content -- blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube -- to enable our digital selves to exist long after we don’t.
Taken one step further, if coupled with the advances in robotics, future generations could invite virtual representations of those close to them who have died to join in discussions and planning. It’s something to consider about when you post anything online. It’s quite possible whatever you say or do that stays in the cloud will be a part of the post-you you. In other words, you potentially have the capability of being a part of your own legacy.
All of this means that one of the things you have to consider when you are planning for the future is who will be the executor of the digital part of your legacy. I plan to write quite a bit about this in the future. There are services and companies coming on line now that recognize the need to organize our digital profiles with an eye to how we will be represented when we’re no longer alive.
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