We finally updated our will this spring. It had been eleven years since the last version, back when our youngest was still in college and the numbers involved were smaller and simpler.
Sitting across from the attorney, working through beneficiary designations and percentages, I noticed something happening in me that I didn't expect. I kept wanting to talk about things the document had no line for. Character. Faith. The kind of people I hope my kids become in their own retirement someday. The attorney was very patient with me, and very clear that none of that goes in a will.
She's right, of course. But it got me thinking about what inheritance actually means, and whether I'd been thinking about it too narrowly for most of my life.
The Verse I Used to Read Wrong
There's a proverb about this that I used to take as straightforward financial advice, almost a command to build wealth for the next generation:
“A good person leaves an inheritance for their children's children.”
Proverbs 13:22
I still think that's true as far as it goes. Leaving something behind, rather than spending down to zero and leaving your kids a mess, is genuinely wise. But I've come to think the verse is describing a kind of person more than a specific financial strategy. A good person leaves something behind, because a good person builds rather than only consumes. The money is evidence of that character, not the whole point of it.
If that's true, then the real question isn't just "how much will I leave them." It's "what kind of person am I being, whose life produces something worth leaving."
The Harder Verse
There's another passage that's been quietly correcting me this year, one I don't hear quoted nearly as often in conversations about legacy and retirement:
“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
1 Timothy 5:8
That's strong language for a letter mostly about church order. Paul is talking specifically about widows in that passage, but the principle underneath it has stuck with me: providing for your own family isn't a nice extra on top of faith. It's part of what faith actually looks like, lived out. You can't claim to trust God with the big things and neglect the practical provision for the people closest to you.
So the will matters. The beneficiary forms matter. The number, whatever it turns out to be, matters. I'm not writing this to talk myself out of responsible financial planning for my kids.
What I Actually Want to Hand Them
But sitting in that attorney's office, I realized the inheritance I care most about isn't on any of those forms. I want my kids to inherit a marriage that stayed faithful for forty-some years, warts and all. I want them to inherit the sight of their mother and me actually trusting God with money instead of white-knuckling it, because I think they've watched us do plenty of white-knuckling over the years and I'd like the last chapter to look different.
I want them to inherit the habit of giving before they feel like they can afford to. I want them to inherit the storage unit we finally emptied, the smaller house we chose on purpose, the version of us that decided contentment was worth more than a bigger number, not because we're teaching a lesson, but because that's genuinely what they'll have watched us live.
None of that fits on a beneficiary form. All of it, I think, is worth more than what does.
If you're updating your own will this year, or finally getting around to one for the first time, I'd just ask you to sit with both halves of this. Provide for them. Paul's instruction to Timothy is not optional. But don't let the paperwork convince you that's the whole inheritance. The best thing I can leave my kids might already be sitting at the kitchen table with them, and it has nothing to do with an attorney's fee.
God bless,
Paul