If You Don't Have Kids, What's Your Legacy?

What do our lives mean as our genetic lines go extinct? Vestiges of what we amassed and who we were remain, but not in the form of offspring we did not have.

Source: Nattanan Kanchanaprat/Pixabay

Let’s start by following the money. The Federal Reserve estimates the average net worth of a couple with no kids is $1,867,480, compared to $1,151,730 for a couple with kids.

Finances tell only part of the story. Women without kids enjoy better health and fewer disabilities than women with kids.

Given those resources, what do we leave behind when we die?

There’s also the existential question about the purpose of our having lived at all. If our lives have made a difference, what form does that difference take when we no longer walk the Earth? How do we want to be remembered? And by whom?

While we can fret over the details of estate planning, our money does have the power to change lives. We can leave some to siblings, nieces, nephews, sure. We can also bestow some to organizations and people who support efforts we care about.

At the intersection of age and not having kids sits the demographic most likely to leave money to charity. According to one study, childless Americans over age 50 are “more than four times as likely [as people with children] to report having a charitable estate plan.”

We’re prime prospects for philanthropic organizations, and our gifts can take myriad forms: donor-advised funds, scholarships, family foundations, land conservation, and construction of buildings. How it’s spent can be customized to fit our values and passions.

I have a small donor-advised fund managed by a community foundation in my state. It cost me nothing to set up the fund, and the balance is just a few thousand dollars. I did receive a minuscule tax write-off I’ve mostly forgotten. However, while alive, I can make grants to organizations whose work I admire.

Source: Katerina Kucherenko/Pixabay

After I’m gone, a young mother I love and respect will take over the role of grant-making. She’s pretty excited to shoulder the responsibility, especially since the fund’s focus is on early childhood literacy. She has no funds available today to set up such a fund of her own, but she’ll learn how it works.

I know an artist who died recently at age 101. She and her long-deceased husband never had kids. They did, however, purchase a parcel of pristine land on one of Washington State’s San Juan Islands. Before her death, she put this property into a conservation easement, which will keep the land free from further development forever. The locals are ecstatic to have access to the beautiful bay she saved.

A brilliant engineer and her scientist husband originally provided funds to endow much-needed academic journal subscriptions for the graduate school library where they met. What started as a small, but generous idea eventually blossomed into a brand-new wing that will bear their name long after their lives are completed.

When it comes to family treasures and memorabilia, I’m a big fan of passing them on now, rather than after I’m gone.

This spring, I visited a niece I haven’t seen since the pandemic. I brought along some old photos of her grandfather and great-grandfather, shared with me years ago by my beloved aunt. Her eyes welled as she looked at the infant form of the grandfather she loved, held in the arms of the grandpa I cherished, whom she had never met. I’m so glad I got to see her joy, and over the years, I know she will tell many family stories to her young son.

I now know that the time and life energy I can invest in others is a direct result of not having children of my own. My care and influence cover a scope that surely would have narrowed had I raised my own progeny. Their absence gives me the capacity to touch so many other lives.

Source: By Pixabay on Pixabay