Leaving a gift to Raglan in his Will…

Let’s call him ‘a Raglan local’.

He’s a bloke who has lived in the popular seaside town for many years, a keen and adept surfer with a lifestyle and career designed to keep him at the beach.

Not getting any younger, he and his wife recently wrote their Wills, and he’s eager to share what they realised along the way and then decided to do - but know he’s asked not to be identified here as it is a bit personal and Whāingaroa is a small place.

To hear and tell his tale, your Momentum Waikato reporter sat down with the Raglan local at WYLD, a cool café on the main drag Bow Street.

He gets straight to the point: “You never think you’re going to get old, but then you realise you’ve only got so many summers left.”

“Everyone reaches their ‘ripeness’, when it is time to give the end of your life some serious consideration, you can try to ignore it, but this party IS going to end sometime,” he says with a rueful smile.

“I did read that book ‘Die Broke’, which tells you how to finish up with just a cheque for the undertaker, but that takes a LOT of coordination.

“And as a couple, we have a responsibility to each other to have our affairs in order. So the last one standing is able to fulfill the other one’s wishes, and can have a good feeling about continuing their values, and feel their spirit.

“My wife raised it, initially because she wanted to figure out who is going to look after us, as we don’t have kids, but then we both realised there’s more to this, that what will happen after we’re both gone needs lots of thinking.

“We ran the sums on how we could do the rest of your life, living in ‘the way to which we are accustomed’,” he says, chuckling at the formality of that term.

“We’re not rich, we just have the few odds-and-ends we’ve built up as we’ve got older, but we realised there will could well be some things left behind, mainly our home here in Raglan, where we certainly want to live until we die, and which could be worth a bit.

“Both of us figured out that the money tied up in our house could be used to do some good after we’re gone, but then we thought ‘we want to do this, want to do that, but who’s going to do it’?

“Then we talked about Momentum Waikato, because I’d seen you guys in action around the region, and we realised Momentum is the solution to all that angst, so let’s get the ball rolling!”

The Raglan local and his wife got in touch with us and, after some discussion, decided to leave gifts in their Wills, also known as bequests, to create an endowment fund at Momentum focused on supporting recreation in Raglan.

“I like that people can choose to focus their energy on local change, that’s what makes me interested in Momentum Waikato,” says the Raglan local, stirring his coffee.

“Knowing what Momentum has done, things like the Theatre project - that’s substantial and will be there for a long time. You guys are like the portal that focuses the attention on things that are meaningful. I want to participate in something major, and you guys are gathering a funding resource that will have some real scale.

“Instead of leaving money to an outfit that will use it all up when it gets it, I want a larger vision, something that has legacy to it, that chugs away doing good into the future,” he says, gesturing ‘big’ with his hands.

Having chosen Momentum, the next step for the Raglan local was asking himself how he could help his own slice of heaven.

“There is a great community in Raglan, this place has given us so much, so I asked myself - how to make it even better here?

“Having been involved at the other end, with organisations that are asking for money, I can see there is a necessity to create something big enough to make a difference.

“Local groups all struggle for financial support, it seems like all the things that create joy struggle to be funded. Everyone goes ‘cap in hand’ - like the football teams just needing balls and shirts.

“Good facilities for sport and leisure create good community. So, we thought it would be good to have a fund that will do that stuff.”

The Raglan local and his wife calls their vision the ‘Go Big Sports and Recreation Fund’, because they don’t want to create an endowment in their own name.

The reason being that while their bequests will establish the fund, it will then be open to public donations and other bequests, as with a number of other Momentum funds, so it can more quickly grow to a size that can provide decent sized distributions each year.

(Note though that this fund will only be activated if and when the charitable gifts in their Wills to Momentum are realised, meaning one or both bequests are still in later version of their Wills, and that their estate is not significantly eroded by later health issues or other life challenges.)

“Recreation is a broad term, it is not just sport, if an idea that needs funding can be under that umbrella, it could be accommodated by this fund we want to create,” says this lifetime surfer.

“What kind of recreational benefits can be achieved? There’s potential for innovation, are there opportunities here that wouldn’t happen elsewhere? Raglan is unique, so what’s ‘recreation’ in a Raglan style?

“We certainly want a public fund that others can load into it. Ring fenced for recreation in Raglan, and then I’m leaving it up to Momentum to work with locals here to decide what needs to be supported,” he says as he finishes his coffee.

Any last thoughts from the Raglan local, before the reporter closes his notebook?

“I hope this article will help other people get on board with Momentum Waikato. What you’re doing is a great way to lift community.”