The Reader's Guide: What Matters

Imagine that a distant relative of yours discovered a weathered old trunk in her attic, and sent it to you. When you open the trunk, you find a number of possessions that belonged to your great-grandparents, including the handwritten personal journal that your great-grandmother kept for years. How important would that frayed old book be to you? Now, imagine that you also discovered a similar kind of journal that had been kept by your grandfather, and another that your mother filled with her most heartfelt thoughts and experiences for many years.What would be the value to you of having those journals? Would you understand your family better, and would you gain a deeper sense of what it means to be a family tied together by common threads generation after generation? And now for the big question: do you have those journals? Do you know your family story, going back generations? Not just the family tree- that is simply a chronology chart. Do you have the complete picture, the stories about how your parents and theirs became who they were, about how they faced life with all of its triumphs and tragedies. The legacy stories that define your absolutely unique family.The sad truth is that very few families have journals or any other kinds of collections of first-hand stories about their own families.The purpose of this Reader's Guide to What Matters is to provide you with the opportunity to tell your own story. And not just to share it in writing or audio recordings, but also to reflect upon the things that matter most in your own life and how you have shared (or not shared) those with your own family. The Guide contains exercises and information you can use to identify and articulate your story and what matters most to you as a way of preparing your children / grandchildren to receive the most important and meaningful legacy of all from you- your story.Plus, you will find out how and why you may want to share this information with your attorney, financial advisor, CPA, etc., or with professionals trained to help translate your 'What Matters' list into concrete tools to help your family today, and for generations to come. As What Matters co-author Rod Zeeb puts it, "Financial and estate planning help you to pass what you own to future generations. What Matters planning helps you to pass who you are to future generations." Thank you for reading What Matters. Great value for you and your family can be found inside this Reader's Guide. We wish you well on that journey.