You have been putting off writing your will. You feel like you don’t need one yet. You’re relatively young and healthy. You’ll deal with estate planning later.
If that’s how you feel, you may not be surprised to learn that around 60 percent of people in the United States are right there with you: They have not written a will or created an estate plan.
The reasons cited above are also very common. When people are in their 30s, 40s and 50s, they feel like they can just wait a bit longer. They assume that writing a will is something you do after retirement.
You can see it if you sort people by age. When you look at millennials, for instance, the total amount of people who haven’t written a will yet is 78 percent. That’s significantly higher even than the 60 percent overall statistic, and it’s likely because millennials are between 18 and 36 years old. Most don’t even think they have hit the halfway point in their lives yet.
Of course, this assumption is not always accurate. A lot of car accidents claim lives, especially when the drivers are young. People who are not anywhere near retirement pass away from heart disease, cancer and other leading medical issues in the United States. You never really know how long you have.
That’s why it is so important to plan ahead. Everyone should know what estate planning options they have and how to get those documents on file. Most people don’t, but that does not mean they’re actually too young or too healthy to need a will.