As a genealogist, you spend your time searching for information about the lives of your ancestors. Have you ever given thought about how to leave your own, personal, legacy for your descendants to find? Do you have things that you want to say to living family members, or advice to give them, that you feel that you just cannot say at this time? Perhaps the software from Legacy Quest is just the thing you need.
Legacy Planner Online was created by the LegacyQuest company, which is located in St. George, Utah. The purpose of the Legacy Planner Online was to help people to document and preserve their legacy. It gives you a way to define how you will be remembered and gives you an easy way to record your family history.
It can also be used as an organizational tool where important information can be collected so that your loved ones will have an easier time finding it after you are gone, or if you are incapacitated. This includes things like bank account numbers, insurance policies, retirement accounts, investments, real estate documents, vehicles, and whatever other important assets you happen to have.
You can purchase the software right from their website. It comes with a Legacy Planner Guide Book and a Digital Legacy Planner. The planner is a one and a half inch hand stitched Italia Binder, with 80lb acid free archival paper forms. There are plastic binder pockets that you can place certificates into, and sheet protectors for photos. The Digital Legacy Planner CD allows you to complete information and print it from your PC. I have looked, but I cannot find any information that indicates that the Legacy Planner CD can be used on a Mac.
This software allows you to leave a legacy of your life for your descendants in exactly the way that you want to. Legacy Planner Online is a great place to write your life story. Think for a moment how exciting it is to learn about the day to day life of one of your ancestors from several generations ago. Journals and diaries are treasures to genealogists. What you choose to write about your own life story is going to be very interesting for your future descendants to read over, even if it’s not something you consider to be particularly exciting right now.
A unique feature of this planner is the part where you can write letters of advice or forgiveness. Perhaps you have really young grandchildren, or great grandchildren, today. What advice would you like to give them on their wedding day, or when they have their first child? Write that letter into the Legacy Planner, and your words of wisdom will be there for them when the time comes. You can also write words of forgiveness for relatives whom you have had conflicts with.
Image by Curt Fleenor on Flickr