We tend to put away the thought of leaving behind a legacy because we think to ourselves, "I’m not dying now and I don’t want to think about dying." The idea of providing an inheritance for our children, friends, and family, forces us to admit to ourselves that we will be leaving one day. However morbid the prospect of dying seems to us, once we stop denying it, we can start to consider death as a major motivator for taking on all that life has to offer. We also start to consider the experiences that we may have been denied in our lives and make a way for those who are coming after us to overcome them. The Wealth Education Exchange presents 3 inheritances that you should plan to leave behind.
Disciplinary Legacy:
In this day and age, teaching kids discipline sounds like child abuse, but it’s necessary to teach children the value of having discipline. Instilling discipline into the fabric of the identity of your children directly impacts their success in adulthood. It improves the ability to sacrifice instant gratification for a greater reward. Without this skill, any monetary inheritance will be meaningless as it will be squandered immediately. If you do what we teach at the Wealth Education Exchange, you will likely have no small amount of money to leave to your adult kids… make sure they have discipline!
Ethical Legacy:
Everyone who is successful has a moral code of ethics that they use to guide their decision-making process. Whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism, Samurai Code, the 10 Commandments, the US Constitution… or some mixture… you must have a solid code of ethics to be a person of integrity. This makes you more reliable, and therefore, more valued in the marketplace. Ethical integrity includes a strong work ethic (someone who makes their company more money than the cost of having them), social ethic (love for your neighbor), and economic ethic (being selfless,not selfish). An inheritance of integrity is worth more than any amount of money. A penniless young adult with a radical sense of integrity will always fly further than a trust fund baby with a radical sense of entitlement.