Values, Not Valuables

I had only my intuition to guide me in my planning for ESOL, the Electronic Organizer for Life and Legacy, the tool for having and leaving good records and good directions, good stories and good memories.

ESOL is designed to organize the Business of Your Life and Legacy easily with ways to memorialize and revise records and directions and create and preserve a Legacy Archives for any person.

Now a landmark study, The Allianz American Legacies Study, indicates that I'm right on the money.  The study was commissioned by the Allianz Life Insurance Company, designed by Ken Dychtwald of AgeWave and conducted by Harris Interactive who surveyed 2627 US adults, half boomers and half their elders, 65 or older.

Here are some of the more interesting highlights.

• Non-financial leave-behinds - like ethics, morality, faith and religion - are 10 times more important to both boomers and elders with children than the financial aspects of a legacy transfer.

Passing along "values and life lessons" is overwhelmingly considered (by over 75 percent) the most important element of a legacy for both generations.

• Sixty-eight percent of boomers and 71 percent of those in their parents' generation say they have a high comfort level discussing legacy and inheritance, yet only 31 percent of elders and 29 percent of boomers have actually had a thorough discussion that includes all four pillars of legacy: values and life lessons, instructions and wishes to be fulfilled, personal possessions of emotional value, and financial assets or real estate.

• Fulfilling last wishes and distributing personal possessions were five times more likely to be the greatest source of family conflict during a legacy transfer than the distribution of finances according to boomers whose parents are not alive.