We all know that a surprising percentage of people put off creating an estate plan. Although that may come as no surprise, what might surprise you is the number of investors who do not have a comprehensive estate plan in place.
A recent survey found that over 20 percent of all investors who responded to the survey did not have an estate plan. The survey provided some insight into which investors were more likely to procrastinate when it came to creating an estate plan. Money, age, sex, and level of knowledge all appear to affect the likelihood that an investor will have an estate plan.
Male investors were more likely to have an estate plan; however, not by a large margin. This may simply boil down to the fact that women tend to undervalue their net worth and therefore the need to have an estate plan. An investor’s age played a huge role in how likely he or she was to have an estate plan. Over 60 percent of investors under the age of 40 did not have an estate plan compared to about ten percent of investors over the age of 60.
Investors who had more than $100,000 to invest were also more likely to already have an estate plan in place. This is probably a result of the mistaken belief that only wealthy individuals need an estate plan. Finally, investors who described themselves as lacking knowledge about financial matters were far less likely to have an estate plan than investors who considered themselves to be very knowledgeable.
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