Jim Yih on CTV News on Legacies

Today, I spent some time with Marnie on the CTV News at noon talking about Legacies. This was a recreation of the content of that segment:

(Q) Marnie: Legacy can mean different things to different people. What does it mean to have a legacy?

(A) Jim: Legacy is such a powerful word because it is something that lasts beyond your lifetime. Often the word legacy reminds us of famous people like Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, or Mother Theresa. I happen to think everyone has a legacy. You don't have to be rich or famous to have a legacy. You have a legacy, I have a legacy, everyone watching has a legacy.

There are three things that create your legacy:

1. Your estate creates a legacy. This is the stuff, the money, the assets that you give to other people like your spouse or kids or friends or charity.
2. The other thing that creates legacy is the stories of your life. Everyday you are living you are creating your legacy. Every memory, story, experience, relationship, value, passion, interest, accomplishment, regret, belief, knowledge and wisdom, contributes to your legacy. Simply put, your legacy is what you have done, are doing and will do with your life.
3. The third thing that creates your legacy is your contribution to your community. It's about giving to others. You philanthropic values create part of your legacy.

Legacies are important because they are the essence of why we live and what we live for.

(Q) Marnie: What can people do to preserve or create their legacy?

(A) Jim: There are so many things people can do. The key is just to be consciously aware that you have a legacy and everything you do contributes to that legacy. Here are a few practical things you can do.

• Get your estate affairs organized. In my most recent book 10 Things I Wish Someone Told Me About Retirement, we have a chapter on legacy and Estates and my favorite line is "Either you will be remembered for how well you lived and ended your life or you will be remembered for how others had to untangle your affairs."If you've ever been an executor you will know it is the worst job known to mankind. Yet it's the one thing we always give to the people we love most. The best thing you can do for your loved ones is to get your estate affairs organized and diarized. Make it easy for someone to deal with the legal and financial part of your estate.
• Document and diarize the stories and memories of your life. I always ask the question, "WHAT's more important your MONEY or your LIFE?" The information era has made it easier than ever to help people diarize the memories, stories and history of our lives. There is no one way to do this. There are so many ways to preserve your legacy and the right way is your way. It's so personal. Scrapbooking, blogging, facebook, photo albums, geneology, are all examples of ways to preserve your legacy. There are lots of other tools and books and websites to help people preserve legacy. You just have to find the way that suits you're the best! If you think about it, The memories that stay with us are of special times, of fun and love and laughter, of sharing values and life lessons. Often it's not the money we remember but the memories or the treasured objects that have little financial value but are symbols of memories or people or experiences.
• Live each day knowing you are creating your legacy. Then you are consciously aware that everything you so affects your legacy, we may act differently. Know your values and beliefs so you can understand what you want to teach others like your kids, grandkids and future generations. Because of my work and research on legacies, I have started to work on my own autobiography. Now I sincerely, do not think I am important enough or famous enough to have an autobiography. So why am I writing it? I'm writing it for my kids and their future kids and some people that might learn from me and my life. But here's the really cool thing about writing about your own life. It really helps you to know how you should live your future life. At 40, I am kind of at the halfway point in my life and this exercise has really given me perspective about the next 40 years. What started as an unselfish task has turned out to be very selfish in terms of really helping me as a person recognize what is important in life! That' really priceless.
• A big part of your legacy is what you give to others, what you give to charities and what you give to your community. Everything we learn, we learn from others. Develop a giving strategy. How are you going to give back to others.

Jim, you come from the financial industry, now tell me how you became interested in legacy planning.

Being in the financial industry for the past 20 years, I have worked with thousands of people over the past 20 years, many of my clients passed away. My work in estate planning has lead me to the sad realization that when people die, so many families fight. I thought this was really sad. As I developed relationships with survivors, it's amazing some of the things they do with their inheritance – buy a car, renovate the house, go on a holiday. The money gets used in less interesting ways than you might think and what is remembered is not the money they got.

Then one day it became personal. My mother passed away. She passed away before the birth of my four boys and that to me was really sad because my mom was really special to me. So the way I mourned is I locked myself in the basement and went through all of my mom's possessions to try to create her legacy with a combination of stories, possessions, pictures and I created a book of my mom's legacy. As wonderful as that process was and what I realized was that a lot of my mom's legacy died with her. There were holes that I could not fill in. For example, there were pictures of people I did not know; there was a family history that lacked so much detail; there was so many stories that might have been meaningful to mom but how am I really to know.

So what's your advice to the people watching? How can they benefit from this information?

Firstly, doing something is better than nothing. It's so important to capture something of your life and it's special when it comes from you. The people that love you will want to know more about you. How many times have you said to yourself, I wish I knew more about my grandparent or great grandparent or eclectic uncle or someone. As human beings, we are social beings that learn from each other. How many times have you read a book about someone's life and taken something away from it and said that's a great idea for my life? Think about Tuesdays with Morrie. Who knew Morrie before the book?

Secondly, it's all about relationships. It's funny because we live in a world where technology has given us more ways to communicate but yet, we have less connectivity. Neighborhood block parties have been replaced by blogs and forums. Phone talk has been replaced by texting and emails. I think we need to encourage generations to connect more and legacy is one universal things that binds people together.

Lastly, focusing on your life and your legacy cannot help but make you aware of what's important. I have been working hard on my own legacy by using my program called My Estate Organizer. I've used the information to write me own autobiography. To be honest I don't think I am more important or interesting than anyone else and I am not writing this to be a best seller. I wrote it for my kids and my family because I think it is important to pass on what I have learned in my life to my kids and their kids. But here's the interesting thing . . . I'm 40 and writing this book about my life up to 40 has really helped my to recognize what is important for the next 40 years. When you look back on life, you can't help but think about life differently for the future. I think that's pretty cool!

Jim has recently created 2 software programs to help people organize their estate and their legacy. For more information on these exciting products visit Jim's personal website www.JimYih.com