Leaving a Wealth Legacy

We here at Family Money Values want to help your family maintain their wealth and well being for generations to come. In order to do that, a family needs to have their own identity – members must recognize the unique talents, characteristics, values and goals they have in common with other family members.

Every family, whether rich in dollars or not, can leave a wealth legacy – a legacy of success, of accomplishment and of satisfaction with a life well lived.

Susan Crandell, freelance author, contributing editor to a number of publications and online sites, as well as former editor-in-chief of MORE magazine, and her husband, Stephan Wilkinson, are leaving such a legacy with their daughter and grandson.

I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Susan for one of her upcoming articles and she graciously consented to allow me ask her a few questions for this post as well.

Susan graduated with a degree in history from Middlebury College in Vermont with little thought as to what profession she wanted to pursue. In her senior year, she applied to 3 law schools, but “luckily they turned me down. I didn’t really want to be a lawyer!”

Several professors told her that her writing was really good so she decided to pursue writing and applied to multiple firms in New York. In the end, her pilots license got her the gig. She started as “the lowest of the low” at Flying Magazine (Ziff-Davis Publishing) but ended up there as managing editor. She also met her husband, Stephan, at Flying.

After the birth of their daughter, Brook, she took some time off but then hit it hard, working for multiple different magazines and publishing companies for several years. According to Ms. Crandell, “In publishing, it’s 3 steps forward and 2 steps backward”.

Meanwhile, her husband, Stephan, also a writer and editor, worked from home. He is a former editor of Flying magazine as well as Car & Driver, according to the Sequoia Aircraft Corporation website.

In his spare time, he built a Falco airplane in his barn at home, with his daughter watching the plane grow as she grew. In the 8/5/2002 General Aviation article posted on the site, Mr. Wilkinson is quoted as saying:

“She was able to see, from about 5 to 12 years old, that her father — an ordinary human being — was able to undertake a task that some people think is impossible — and he did it routinely. She grew up having no fear of the impossible.”

What a legacy of success and accomplishment to leave your child!

Meanwhile, Mom – Susan Crandell – ended up taking the number two spot with Ladies Home Journal (the Meredith corp). Her boss there came up with the idea that a magazine for women over 40 could be a real winner.

They knew that that woman 40+ were at a point in their lives when time and money were coming together to allow the women to strike out in new directions. The magazine (MORE) was one of the first to reach out to this demographic and it took off after only 2 issues (the third planned test issue was dropped and the company went ahead with the concept due to the success of the first 2).

Susan was with MORE for 6 years and handled everything related to the creative side of the magazine until promoted to editor in chief 2 years before she left to reinvent herself.

When I asked her if there was a characteristic or trait that allowed her to rise above the crowd of other writers at the magazines, she said “I am able to use both sides of my brain. I use the creative side but I’m also very organized.”

Editor in chief was not her dream job (she didn’t enjoy the company politics and other administrative work that came with it) and ironically being promoted led her to think about reinventing herself as she had seen many of the women featured in MORE doing.

She enjoyed her job at MORE. She liked the glamorous parts of the job, such as being on the Today show, chatting with Diane Sawyer on national television, lunching with Jamie Lee Curtis, and also the job perks, such as having a car service and being able to institute great projects like the marathon for women over forty that she and the publishing director of MORE cooked up over coffee.

She quit 9 years ago to re-imagine herself. She doesn’t miss the 3.5 hour commute but does miss the people and health insurance. Since leaving the high profile editor in chief job of a 1.3 million subscriber magazine, she says she has “1/3 the money and 3 times the fun”. She doesn’t miss the money though, money isn’t everything and she values the time she now has available. Besides, she says, “We have always been savers”.

She has a 15 month old grandson and values the ability to take off across the country to stay with him, and still bring along her new projects. She works fewer days now, maybe 4 days a week instead of 5 and on those fine summer days feels free to jump on her bike and ride 50 miles.

She says “It took awhile to get over the feeling that I had thrown away something that society valued highly – a glamorous job with a high salary.”

She got started directly on her new life, taking a contributing editor position at MORE and working freelance on several projects. She even wrote a book, something she hadn’t done previously.

Per Susan, after leaving her high profile editor in chief job at MORE, she wrote two stories, “Don’t Call me Retired” and “The Reinvention Crazies”. The later propelled her into book writing! An agent for (then) Warner Books was looking for someone to write a book on reinventing yourself and had read her article.

While researching and writing the book, she worked out of a little studio next to her house. She interviewed 45 people to get their stories for the book. She says that everyday when she walked across the yard she would just smile because she was reinventing her own life too.

She currently blogs at Life Goes Strong and is on a small team for Work Reimagined (an AARP and Linked In joint project) assigning, editing and writing. She enjoys working with the team after working solo for several years prior to that.

Susan’s legacy to her daughter and grandson includes not only the enduring story of the American work ethic, but also a demonstration of the ability to recognize and jump on life’s opportunities. Leaving a highly glamorous and presumably high dollar career to pursue her own life interests at her own pace stresses the value she places on having a life well lived.

Both parents left a legacy of the joy of the written word, demonstration of the family predilection for taking on challenging opportunities and a legacy of living a satisfying life, doing the things they want to do. Their daughter, Brook, is now a Mom, an editor and a race car driver – carrying on the legacy and demonstrating it anew to her own child.

I’d say that is a great wealth legacy!

How would you describe the legacy you are building for your family?