25 September 2025
Margo Lestz
CEO and Consultant
Leaving a financial legacy is crucial and can change many lives, but legacy can be more than what you leave behind in your bank account.
Your legacy can encompass the values you instil in others, the knowledge you pass down, the opportunities you create, and the leadership example you set. These elements form a lasting foundation that continues to influence and inspire long after you're gone.
This guide explores five practical ways to build a meaningful legacy that extends well beyond financial wealth. Each approach offers actionable steps you can start implementing today to ensure your positive influence continues for generations to come.
1. Lead with Your Values
Your values serve as the cornerstone of your legacy. They shape how others remember you and guide the decisions of those who follow in your footsteps. When you consistently demonstrate integrity, compassion, and authenticity, you create a blueprint for others to live by.
Consider how your daily actions reflect your core principles. Do you keep your promises? Do you treat everyone with respect, regardless of their position? Do you stand up for what's right, even when it's difficult? These seemingly small choices accumulate into a powerful example that others will remember and emulate.
Make your values visible in your interactions with family, colleagues, and community members. People will notice when you choose honesty over convenience, when you help someone in need, or when you admit your mistakes and learn from them.
2. Invest in Education and Knowledge
The old saying "give someone a fish, and they eat for a day; teach them to fish, and they eat for a lifetime" perfectly captures this approach to legacy building. Sharing your knowledge and skills creates independence and capability in others.
Mentorship is one of the most direct ways to share your expertise. Whether you're guiding a younger person through career decisions or helping a colleague develop new skills, you're transferring valuable knowledge that will serve them throughout their lives. This wisdom often gets passed forward to others, multiplying your impact exponentially and becoming part of your lasting contribution to the world.
Support educational opportunities for others through scholarships, training programmes, or simply by connecting people with learning resources. You might fund a scholarship at your local university, sponsor someone's professional development course, or create a library of resources that others can access.
Financial education deserves special attention in knowledge sharing. Teaching others how to manage money, invest wisely, and make sound financial decisions creates a legacy that protects and empowers them. This knowledge helps ensure that any financial wealth you leave behind will be preserved and grown rather than squandered.
3. Create Opportunities for Others
When you provide opportunities, you enable people to reach their potential and create their own positive impact on the world.
Professional opportunities offer powerful ways to build a legacy. Providing internships, apprenticeships, or entry-level positions gives people their first step up the career ladder. Many successful professionals can trace their achievements back to someone who gave them an early opportunity to prove themselves.
Networking connections are another valuable form of opportunity creation. When you introduce people to useful contacts, recommend them for positions, or include them in important conversations, you're expanding their possibilities. These connections often lead to unexpected opportunities and lasting relationships.
Entrepreneurial support can transform lives and communities. Whether you're providing startup funding, offering business advice, or simply encouraging someone's innovative ideas, you're helping create new enterprises that can employ others and contribute to economic growth.
Creative and personal development opportunities also matter. Supporting someone's artistic pursuits, encouraging their volunteer work, or helping them develop new skills demonstrates that you value them as a person, not just their professional capabilities.
Remember that opportunities ripple outward. The intern you mentor today might become an industry leader who creates opportunities for hundreds of others. The small business you help launch might grow to employ dozens of people and support entire families.
4. Lead by Example
Your daily behaviour creates a template that others follow, often unconsciously. The way you handle challenges, treat people, and approach your responsibilities becomes part of how others learn to navigate their own lives.
Resilience in the face of adversity teaches powerful lessons. When others see you persist through difficulties, maintain your principles under pressure, and find constructive solutions to problems, they learn that challenges can be overcome with the right approach and mindset.
Ethical behaviour in small matters demonstrates that integrity isn't situational. Paying your bills on time, keeping confidences, and admitting mistakes might seem like minor actions, but they establish patterns that others notice and often adopt.
Work ethic and professionalism set standards for those around you. When you consistently deliver quality work, meet your commitments, and treat colleagues respectfully, you're modelling behaviour that influences workplace culture and individual development.
Demonstrate through your actions that fulfilment comes from meaningful relationships, personal growth, and contributing to something larger than yourself. This balanced approach to success helps others develop healthier priorities and more sustainable approaches to achievement.
People remember how you made them feel and what you inspired them to do. Your leadership example can motivate others to raise their own standards, pursue their goals, and treat people with greater kindness and respect.
5. Document and Share Your Story
Your personal story contains lessons that can guide and inspire others long after you're gone. The challenges you've overcome, the decisions you've made, and the insights you've gained represent a unique blueprint that others can learn from.
Write letters to family members sharing your experiences and the lessons you've learned. Explain not just what happened in your life, but why you made certain choices and what you learned from both successes and failures. These personal accounts become treasured family resources.
Create recordings or videos where you share your story in your own voice. Technology makes this easier than ever, and hearing your actual words and seeing your expressions adds emotional impact that written accounts can't match.
Share your journey publicly through blogs, social media, or speaking engagements. You never know who might benefit from hearing about your experiences. The career change that terrified you might inspire someone else to take a necessary leap. The failure that taught you resilience might help someone else recover from their own setbacks.
Focus on your "why" when sharing your story. Explain the values and motivations that drove your decisions. Help others understand not just what you did, but why you did it and what you hoped to achieve. This context makes your story more useful as guidance for others.
Include the ordinary moments alongside the major milestones. Often, it's the small daily choices and quiet perseverance that offer the most practical lessons for others trying to build their own meaningful lives.
Start Building Your Legacy Today
While leaving a financial legacy for your family and others is essential, money isn’t the only thing you need to leave behind.
Your legacy begins with how you live today. Start with one small action. Send that encouraging message to someone who needs it. Share a lesson you've learned with a family member or co-worker. Write down one story from your life that contains a valuable lesson. These simple steps begin building the foundation of a legacy that truly matters.
The lives you touch and the wisdom you share could continue creating value for generations to come.
__________
The information provided on this website is for educational or informational purposes only. Please refer to our legal disclaimer for further information.
Share article
