Yes, you heard us right, millennials do need to start thinking about their estate plans now and it has nothing to do with the fact that they have several decades to go before they actually get to the retirement stage. A whopping near 80% of the younger generation folks do not have a care about the future or so a recent Caring.com study shows. The percentage of 18 to 36 year old Americans with a planned will or trust is disturbingly low at 22%.
As expected, elders have planned ahead
Compare this with the whopping 81%of Americans who are 72 years and older, and we can see that the older generation is playing its card right with some smart planning going to making sure that their assets are distributed properly after their life time. The next age band, that is 53 to 71 year olds, witnesses a fairly dramatic drop in the number of people who have a formal estate plan in place. The number stands at 60% for this age group. For those in the age group 37 to 52 years, the percentage of those who have planned ahead drops further to a really depressing 36%. The study shows, overall, that Americans do need to take estate planning far more seriously than they do at present and they need to start doing it earlier in life, too.
Most common reasons for not planning ahead
There were two excuses that seemed to be cropping up often when the participants were asked about their reasons for not having done their estate planning. The first one was that they felt they did not have enough assets to warrant making a will or do some estate planning. The second was that they felt they still had time to get around to doing it.
The fact is that life is unpredictable and this is precisely the reason why we should get the estate planning out of the way as early as possible. With a clear cut will or trust set up, there is no ambiguity about what happens to your assets and how your dependents are provided for and who makes sure your assets can be utilized by them in the best possible way. This makes it imperative for younger folks, especially those with a young, dependent family, to create their will as early as possible instead of putting it off to their retirement stage.