Leaving your family an account of your life story is as important as thinking through your estate plan. How do you want to be remembered once you’ve passed away and left this earth? What family history and lessons do you want to outlive you? As we age, these questions become all the more important and urgent. After all, everyone has a shelf life.
Providing a legacy to your heirs encompasses more than leaving material goods, such as funds in a retirement account, real estate or possessions. It’s about the life you led, who you are and your family history. Research shows that sharing family stories and history is good for the mental health of adolescents. Another recent study has found that adults over 60 also benefit from life story projects.
The basic meaning of a legacy is a gift of money or other personal property usually granted in a will. It can be a substantial gift that must be managed and cared for. Or, it can be the impact you leave on the generations that outlive you. Think of it as the ripple effect after tossing a rock into a pond. How far or how long the rippling motion lasts depends, in part, on how big an impact you make while alive.
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How to leave your life story as a legacy
Leaving a lasting legacy takes time and effort. You need a plan to ensure it lives on from one generation to the next. It doesn't have to cost you anything, but digital or professional services might make the process easier. Here are several resources to help you start your journey.
1. StoryCorps
StoryCorps holds the top spot as the single largest collection of human voices ever captured. The platform collects and records meaningful conversations about people’s lives, saved in the U.S. Library of Congress and broadcast weekly on NPR to over 12 million listeners. One of the best things about a StoryCorps submission is that you leave a legacy in your voice, rather than print. The downside is that you can't add photographs.
Cost: Free, though you may leave a donation.
2. Kindred Tales
Kindred Tales is a one-year subscription service that helps capture your most cherished memories and life stories. The service will send you weekly writing prompts. One nice feature is the speech-to-text dictation, so you can tell your story orally. The finished product is a professionally bound hardcover book.
Cost: $90 to $119
3. Storyworth
Once a week, Storyworth sends a single question that inspires you to write. After you’ve written your story or a part of your story based on the question, you email it back. Your submissions are then bound together in a keepsake book.
Cost: $89 to $99
4. Modern Heirloom Books
For a Cadillac experience, Modern Heirloom Books will pair you with a personal historian. You may meet first online, but they will eventually travel to you. You will have a series of in-person interviews and be asked to provide old photos, which are then curated into a “graphically and narratively evocative” book.
Cost: Life story projects generally start at $7,000, while tribute books start at $1,250. The One-Hour Heirloom provides a taste of the process and provides a miniature bespoke book for $1,500
A less expensive competitor is No Story Lost, which costs an average of $1,649.
5. Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper
An ethical will is written to convey your history, values and wisdom to your descendents. For instructions on how to write an ethical will, check out the book Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper by Barry K. Baines. Along with the book, you find an accompanying resource guide that “provides a practical path for articulating values, beliefs and life lessons.”
Cost: $10.99 to $19.99
6. Ancestry Storymaker and Family History Book
If you already have an Ancestry.com account, you may want to explore some tools they've developed to preserve stories and photographs. The advantage of creating your story in the app is that you can link to the stories of other family members, even if they have died, as long as they are in your family tree. The Storymaker tool includes cropping, colorizing and other image functions, and, of course, plenty of space to write your own story. You can design a print book of your album on the app as a "family history book," which is produced in partnership with MyCanvas.
Cost: MyCanvas book is $55 to $75
Ancestry.com membership: Free trial period, then $83 and up for six months
7. ‘For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story’
Rabbi Steve Leder’s book, For You When I Am Gone, provides questions and prompts to stimulate deep reflection as you compose your legacy letter. It can include joy and regrets and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life to pass along to future generations.
Cost: $15.20 for hardback book
8. MyStoriesMatter Blog
Like Kindred and Storyworth, MyStoriesMatter provides tools for recording your story orally or writing it down, collecting photographs and printing a book based on your life story. This service also offers concierge interviews and ghostwriting.
Cost: $149 and up
Why hire a personal historian?
Writing your life story can be daunting. Where do you start? You may even ask yourself if anyone really cares about your life story. Telling your life story to a personal historian, a neutral outsider trained to listen and ask good questions, often elicits a fuller, more revealing story than you might write on your own. And trust me, your story is important.
Personal historians can help you draw out the details of your life and recall key events that are meaningful to you and to future generations. They can interview friends, family, and colleagues to elicit a fuller, richer picture of your life. Some personal historians also specialize in preserving and organizing old photographs, letters, diaries, and related memorabilia to include in your story. Be aware that prices for historians can range widely depending on the depth of your story. The Association of Personal Historians (APH) is a good place to begin your search.
Contact local non-profit, historical socieities or religious groups if you want a more informal (or free) arrangement. Many pair volunteer interviewers with older people who want to record their memories for family and history.
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