What is the cost and the benefit of recording a Life Story

Value, cost and worth are all interesting terms. Most of the time we associate them with the financial cost of something but when we’re talking of a Life Story it’s important to consider the emotional and physical effort along with any financial cost.

This is not only the cost of the actual production of the Life Story but also the cost of what a Life Story means emotionally to you and those around you. Take a moment to look over all of your life, what has been of value, in all the different forms and compare it with the relevant costs of producing a life story to ensure that those things aren’t lost.

Costs of producing a Life Story.

A Life Story produces several benefits and the associated costs from three main groups.

* Financial out of pocket expenses

* Emotional issues and benefits

* Physical effort and time

And the costs can be paid before or after it’s too late to capture a Life Story, with the cost and benefits being different depending on if you have acted earlier or not.

Insignificant financial costs

Often the first consideration is the financial cost of a Life Story particually if you intend to use the skills of a professional.

Just for a moment consider what has been your income over your lifetime and what have you spent all those hundreds of thousands of dollars on? How many meals, clothes and holidays have you spent money on because it was important? How much money have you given away out of good will, invested and grown in worthy projects and how much have you spent on whimsical things, just because you could? What are the things that all that income has been spent on?

As a very loose comparison of what is earned over a lifetime… Based on income of $50000/year, over say 40 years, in today’s dollar value, a lifetime’s earnings is somewhere around 2 million dollars. When you look at the financial cost of recording a Life Story, even if you were to contact a professional, it’s insignificant to the money that has moved through you hands over that lifetime. And if you were to use some of the stratigies and ideas that are mentioned here at Create Your Life Story the cost can be considerably less. Compared to a lifetime of income and expenditure, capturing a Life Story is an insignificant financial cost.

Emotional costs are expensive

A higher price and one that is impossible to measure is the emotional cost of a Life Story. What are you going to have to face up to in recording a Life Story? Are there issues that need to be discussed or avoided and how do you feel about these points? Maybe these emotional issues are too expensive to pay and you have to let it be or maybe the benefits out-way any angst that you will feel.

Effort of finding the time

At it’s most simple, the physical effort of recording a Life Story is just several hours of conversations captured while an audio recorder is located nearby. That’s it – Sit down, have a chat and let the recorder do it’s job, game over. Or you can take some of the ideas that are here on the site and in the free e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you and with just a little more effort, produce a much better quality recording worthy of sharing. The highest physical cost is in finding the time to set aside.

Costs for not paying early

But there’s a price for inaction.

Until a certain date all costs will be a blend of financial, emotional and physical, with a return of a story to share forever. After that date though, it’s no longer possible to pay any price to get the story, it’s forever gone. The cost of your inaction will have to be paid with regret of lost opportunit...