One-third of American adults do not have any kind of estate plan, despite almost 60% claiming it was important to have one. That is one of the findings of a recent study by Caring.com.
Estate planning professionals have long worried about the number of people who are unprepared for their future. The survey set out to examine who those people were and what was stopping them.
Young people are getting better at making estate plans
One of the survey’s surprising results is that young people, defined as 18 to 34-year-olds, are more likely to have an estate plan than those in middle age, described as 35 to 55-year-olds. Estate planning among the young has risen since the previous survey in 2019, yet it has declined amongst those in middle and older age.
When researchers asked people of all ages why they did not yet have an estate plan, they gave them four possible answers to choose from:
- 34% said they had not got around to it
- 28% thought they did not have enough assets to need one
- 8% said they did not know how to do it
- 6% believed it was too expensive to set up
The thought of creating an estate plan can be offputting, yet it need not be with the right guidance. While it will require time and money, it may not be as much as you might think. There are many options available, from a basic plan to something far more complex. If you do not have many assets, a simple plan will suffice. The more assets you have, the more you stand to gain by using the full range of estate planning tools available.
