You’re thinking about writing a will or making an estate plan, but everyone you talk to tells you that there’s no point in doing it yet. After all, you’re still in your 30s. Life expectancy at birth in the United States is around 76 years old – though it is falling – so you have decades left. People might tell you to start doing your estate planning in your 60s or after you retire, for example.
But are these individuals correct? Are you too young to do estate planning?
You can never be too young
In actuality, there’s no age that’s too young, save for prior to 18. You need to at least be a legal adult to make an estate plan. But after that point, you can always make a plan and just update that plan as you get older. There’s no point that’s too early because you can make changes to address your current situation in life.
Your 30s may be a specifically great time to start doing estate planning. This is when many people have children, for example. If you do have a child, and that child is still a minor, then estate planning should largely focus on setting up trusts to hold your assets or choosing a guardian to take care of your child if you pass away. This is something that wouldn’t even matter if you put off estate planning until you were in your 60s, but it is crucially important now, and you don’t want to overlook it.
Getting started the right way
If you would like to make your estate plan, be sure you know about all of the legal options you have and how you can use various tools to create a plan that addresses your family’s unique needs.