George Kinder Shares Vision of Legacy and Freedom

Join hosts Bridget and John in this thought-provoking episode of FTFP as they sit down with George Kinder, a pioneer in financial and life planning. Bridget and John, both experienced fee-only financial planners, delve into the profound theme of legacy with their esteemed guest.

📚 Episode Highlights:

- Bridget's Evolution of Legacy Perception: From seeing legacy as self-interested to understanding its broader contributions to the world.

- George Kinder’s New Book: Discover the inspiration behind George's latest book, an easy yet profound read available now on Amazon.

- Three Reflective Questions: George shares pivotal questions to help you reflect on your life achievements and missed opportunities.

- Freedom & Democracy: Kinder’s passionate pursuit of life, financial, and civilization freedom.

- A Legislative Proposal: Advocating for democracy, truth, and humanity over institutional self-interest.

- John’s Reflections on Legacy: Appreciating both large-scale impacts and personal achievements.

George Kinder's new book The Three Domains of Freedom is available on Amazon. Discover how financial planning, mindfulness, and a better civilization can empower you to live a more fulfilling life.

Resources:

- Alliance of Comprehensive Planners: https://www.acplanners.org

Follow Us:

- John Scheer’s Practice: https://www.trinfin.com

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

- Bridget Sullivan Mermel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridget-sullivan-mermel-a72620/

- John Scherer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmscherercfp/

#GeorgeKinder #Legacy #FinancialPlanning #LifePlanning #Interview #FTFP #Podcast #FinancialWellness #Inspiration #Freedom #Democracy

TRANSCRIPT:

John: What is our legacy going to be after we're gone? That's the topic of today's episode of Friends Talk Financial Planning with special guest George Kinder. Hi, I'm John Scherer, and I run a fee-only financial planning practice in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Bridget: And I'm Bridget Sullivan Mermel. I've got a fee-only financial planning practice in Chicago, Illinois. Before we get going further, please subscribe. But now let's move on to George Kinder. So George is a pioneer in the industry and has recently written a book. And he and John are both interested in legacy. So George, why don't you talk about what led you to writing your book and your thoughts about legacy.

George: Yeah, I'm 76 years old and that's relatively young these days, I know, but when Covid came along, I got Covid. I had one of the earliest cases, and it was a really difficult case. It's now five years later, and I still got it. So it wasn't complicated in the body. It was mainly fatigue. But in those early days, we didn't know where it was going to go. I didn't know. And I thought, gosh, my whole life has been training financial planners to work with their clients to discover what would be the most incredible way to live their life and to leave a legacy. But the question became very personal for me because I didn't know how much longer I would live given what we didn't know about Covid.

Now I feel like, hey, I can go on for a long time with this fatigue and manage it. So what happened was I got really busy, delivering on things that I'd been passionate about for years and years. The life planning approach that I know we've talked about in other programs here with the three of us, which has just been a lot of fun, helps to identify what we long for most or what would be most cool to live. And I had in mind three questions. There's a thing we call the three questions. Maybe I should share them.

John: Yeah, that'd be great.

George: So the first question is, if you had all the money you needed, what would you do? The second question is if you only had 5 or 10 years left to live, what would you do? And you can see that's beginning to get closer to a legacy question. And then the third question is if you suddenly discovered out of the blue that you only had 24 hours left to live, what would you do? It's a different question; it's a reflective one. Reflecting on everything that you hoped to do, anticipated doing, what did you miss? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do?

I've kept those questions very close to my heart for 30, 34 years. That third question often becomes the essence of a financial plan because it captures the legacy issue. It's life and death. I didn't get to be a great dad. I didn't get to be as truthful as I would have liked. My job just was too veering over here towards sales. That kind of serious answer can be there. I didn't get to live in the cabin in the country. And for me, I wanted to produce. I'm a writer. So, John mentioned, or maybe it was Bridget who mentioned my book.

This is my most recent book. The Three Domains of Freedom: Each Moment is Yours, Your life is Yours, and Civilization is Yours. I want people to live in freedom. I want everybody to live in freedom. That's a passion that I have. So I'm a huge believer in democracy. I'm a huge believer in freedom of all kinds. In deep meditative freedom, life planning and financial freedom, and in civilization and freedom. So, legacy. There were two things in my three questions that are kind of unusual. One of them was I wanted to live in the weather. It was just that simple. Live in the weather. Second one was illuminated manuscripts.

I wanted to create illuminated manuscripts. I wanted to do beautiful paintings, ink washes, and what became photographs, intermingled with wisdom, teachings, spiritual teachings. And what I realized when I moved to this place on Spectacle Pond where I live in Massachusetts was the beauty of the place. I went out and bought my first camera since I was a boy. And I got out and I just started taking pictures like crazy.

And I had a project which was to capture every single day of the year with the best poetry I could, the most inspiring paragraph I could, and the most beautiful photograph I could. Every single day. And then to deliver that to people. So every day I had a piece of inspiration. I also did it for every week. So I came to Covid and I went, holy cow. I've been working on this thing for 30 years and I got thousands of photographs. Literally it was probably 40,000 photographs and thousands of poems. And I haven't put the books together. What am I going to do? So I got busy and in two years I finished five books.

John: Wow.

George: I think you'll find them beautiful: beautiful color photography with inspiring poetry, I hope, and paragraphs asking how do you live in nature so that nature is informing you with its teachings so that you get its wisdom. And you can get it for free on subscription, a weekly feed of it, on georgekinder.com. So that was part of my legacy, John and Bridgid. And the other part is I want civilization to be a domain of freedom for everybody.

And so right now I'm out talking everywhere, all over the place in many countries, and I'm pitching a single sentence legislative proposal that all institutions put democracy, the truth, the planet, and humanity ahead of their own self-interest. And if you think about it, if our banks only lent to people who did that, and if all corporations had those standards, would we have an earth burning up? Would we have a crisis in democracy? Would we have the dramatic inequalities that we find in the world today? Would we find propaganda of news so that we're in these opposite camps? I think all of those problems would be hugely diminished if we had what I call a fiduciary culture. I've talked too much, but there you go.

John: No, that's wonderful. So many threads to pull on there, George. I'll take that last one first, perhaps. And I've got 11- and 12-year-old sons. And as you were describing your proposal, what struck me was the thing we've been telling them since they could understand: to treat other people like you'd like to be treated, the Golden Rule. And maybe not exactly on point, but golly, how much of life comes down to doing the right thing that we all know is the right thing.

And perhaps it's easier when you're five years old to know what the right thing is or to do the right thing given peer pressure and other things. But I think that that's such a neat thing. And one of the other things I just wanted to point out quickly is just that idea of legacy. As I said, I spend a lot of time thinking about it. I’m not so sure that I've got a handle on what it exactly means or how to do it, so I really appreciate your input. But I heard you describe what I'll call big things and little things. The big things change how laws or countries or people look at the world, the civilization.

That's huge and the legacy is what's written in grand stone or on your tombstone sort of a thing. But then also the little legacy of I took these 40,000 pictures that was this life journey. And you know what, when faced with mortality, getting that stuff done and putting it out there is really important. It's not going to necessarily change the world as this grand legacy, but it’s still an important and vital thing. And anyway, as I heard those two, the big and the little and it doesn't always have to be one way, are the takeaways I had from just hearing you talk. So I really appreciate that.

Bridget: As I’ve heard both of you talk, one of the things I realized about myself is that a lot of times I think about legacy in a kind of self-interested way. When I'm living my life, I'm thinking, where do I want to go, what do I want to accomplish, those types of thoughts. But legacy seems to be more of what do I want my impact on the world to be. It’s about things like what do I want people to think about me but rather how can I influence the way the world's evolving and try to evolve in the direction that I think would be the healthiest for the world?

George: Beautiful.

Bridget: Big and small. It seems like a great place to wrap up and give people just a lot of things to think about. I'm Bridget Sullivan Mermal. I've got a fee-only financial planning practice in Chicago, Illinois.

John: And I'm John Scherer. I've got a fee-only financial planning practice in Middleton, Wisconsin. Our guest today has been George Kinder, a pioneer in the financial planning world, in the life planning world. George has a new book out, and George, could you put the, put the book up again so we can see the title and tell people where they can get their copies so.

George: You can find it on amazon.com and it's a really easy read. It's small but it's also profound, so it'll make you think more deeply about both the small as Bridget and John are talking and the large.

John: That’s great! Thanks so much for your time here, George. We really appreciate the insights on legacy. And both Bridget and I are members of the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners, or ACP. If you like what you hear on our show and some of the things we talked about today with George and would like to find an advisor in your area, you can check out acplanners.org.

Bridget: And please subscribe.

At Sullivan Mermel, Inc., we are fee-only financial planners located in Chicago, Illinois serving clients in Chicago and throughout the nation. We meet both in-person in our Chicago office and virtually through video conferencing and secure file transfer.