Leaving a Legacy With Life Insurance

Life insurance can be part of your legacy, ensuring you’ll have something to leave for the people or causes that matter to you. The death benefit from your life insurance policy has the potential to carry on your memory and positively impact your beneficiaries.

6 Ways You Can Leave a Legacy

1: Leave an inheritance for your children

For most people, this is the most obvious way to leave a lasting legacy after you die. What better way to honor your children and loved ones than by protecting them financially and giving them the financial resources to help achieve their goals? If your loved ones still rely on your financial support, it’s a good idea to leave them enough to replace your income until they can afford to be on their own. If your children no longer depend on you financially, whatever you decide to leave them can serve as an inheritance.

2: Support the important people in your life

If you don’t have children of your own or are looking for a way to make an impact beyond your immediate family, a great way to leave a legacy is to support other important people in your life, including your nieces, nephews, friends or godchildren. By naming your extended family and friends as beneficiaries on your life insurance policy, you can give them an opportunity to pay for college, fund a business venture, take a trip or any other impactful purpose.

3: Donate to a charity

Using your life insurance policy to donate to a cause you deeply care about is a generous way to make a difference in your community long after you’re gone. You have a few options when it comes to using your life insurance policy for a charitable donation, including donating your policy, adding a charitable rider or naming a charity as a beneficiary. By setting up your life insurance to go towards a charity, you can continue to support the cause you’re passionate about even when you are no longer around.

4: Create a park in your name

You can use your life insurance policy funds to create a new park in your honor. You can work with your city or town to establish the plans for a new park before you pass away. Donating the funds for a new park provides something beneficial for the community that will be used and appreciated for decades.

5: Donate to a school or building project

You can show your support for your old alma mater and donate the death benefit of your life insurance policy to a building project or future capital fund. Students will benefit from your gift, and the school may even honor your donation with a plaque or room name at the facility.

6: Establish a scholarship

Finally, you can make a monumental difference in the lives of needy students by using life insurance to establish a scholarship at a college or university. Because scholarships work through an endowment, one monetary gift can provide a student a scholarship year after year, making it a generous and meaningful way to leave your legacy. You should talk to the college’s endowment office to learn more about how to set this up, but typically this is something you can do with anything more than $25,000.