Retirement planning is at the forefront of many people’s minds when they near retirement. You’ve worked diligently to save for retirement, and the big payoff is finally nearby. However, you may also want to start thinking about legacy planning.
We recently had a chance to sit down with Angelina Carleton to discuss designing your legacy plan.
Who is Angelina?
Angelina was a commercial real estate broker 10 years ago and worked with multimillionaires. She was working at an event where the topic was private prisons. As she looked around the room, she questioned whether these individuals realized that they were profiting off the misery of others.
As she went to her car, she asked herself if it was time to leave the commercial real estate sector and go into coaching.
What if she could convince all the financial representatives at the event to invest in something other than private prisons? Through her research, she couldn’t find a coach to help her create a legacy.
What was the solution?
Fill the gap. Angelina realized through her coaching that once people change, it impacts others around them, too. Angelina has helped others figure out their legacy plan and helped them reach this goal.
What is Legacy Planning for Angelina?
For many people, legacy planning means leaving money to their kids or grandchildren. People think of their homes, money, and other material things, but legacy planning is much more than that.
Angelina’s definition of legacy planning is a bit different than the definition you’ll find in the dictionary.
For Angelina, legacy means integrity and being true to yourself while being here. Of course, you can leave money to friends and family. However, people also want peace of mind in the legacy that they leave behind.
When coaching, she can help people get “unstuck.”
She wants to help people understand why they do what they do during their lifetime. When a person can get to know themselves beyond their careers, they can truly see what their theme is in life.
Unfortunately, many people don’t allow themselves to become who they really are until retirement.
A person may be a leader in the business world, but that doesn’t mean that they want to be in this position. Instead, through coaching, Angelina helps people open to who they really are at a younger age so that they can leave behind their own legacy.
A few questions to ask yourself are:
- If you didn’t have to impress anyone, who could you be?
- If you didn’t have to get it right, what could you create?
- If you had nothing to prove, what would your legacy be?
For many people, they can’t answer these questions immediately. However, in one, two or four weeks, people have the answer because they allow it to marinate.
When you don’t have to fit a certain mold, you can create the true legacy that you leave behind. The legacy that goes beyond assets and talks about the way that you live your life, too.
Leaving Your Legacy Plan Behind
Angelina asks to tape all her sessions with clients, and if they approve, she gives them a big book of all the key points that were discussed during the coaching contract. These books can help you leave the legacy you want behind.
For example, let’s say that you run a family business and want to leave it to a successor.
When the successor goes into the head role, they may or may not be ready for this big role and responsibilities. They may not know the company’s:
- Vision
- Mission statement
- Values
- Guiding principles
- Etc.
Aligning these values and principles is important because when these individuals come into an inheritance, whether it be money, a business, or others, it can help them create the legacy they want.
Who Should Be Designing Their Legacy?
Surprisingly, designing a legacy isn’t for everyone. Generally, people who have had coaching of some kind in the past excel in designing their legacies. Coaching is a broad term, but this can be people who have worked with:
- Sports coaches
- Business coaches
- Personal trainers
- Etc.
There needs to be a high level of trusting the process when working with a coach to really extract the maximum value possible.
Legacies aren’t for the lucky. They are only for those willing to perceive.
Angelina’s approach to legacy planning is a lot different than the normal financial legacy planning that we’re used to in our practice. Instead, this is an approach that looks at your life and what it means to truly be yourself.
Instead of an estate plan or financial legacy, this is the legacy of what it means to be you, including your values, guiding principles and beliefs.
For example, some of the clients Angelina is working with have started to try and save the planet and solve some of the problems in the world. This is the type of legacy planning that Angelina has to offer.
If you need help finding the true legacy you want to leave behind, you can go to Angelina’s website to see what she is all about.
Click here to go to Angelina’s website.
There are many approaches you can take with legacy planning. If you need help with the financial side of legacy planning, we can help. Simply call us at (919) 787-8866 or click here to schedule an introduction call with us.