My suggestion: When you Reincarnate and get a past life feat, make it global among your characters.
I play with several groups of friends, and I also just enjoy playing solo. I would like to keep characters of multiple level ranges so that I can level with any group of friends, as well as be able to create a character to level with people just getting into the game (I know a lot of my friends who are trying this game out for the first time)
...and actually have it benefit me in the long run.
I think that if you reincarnate a character, the past life feats you unlock should immediately go to every character on your account, or at least on the server you reincarnated on. This would encourage people to make alts to play with friends that are just getting into the game as it would benefit them heavily in the long run.