Evolutionary psychologists think there’s an innate reason for people not wanting to discuss death and estate planning. They say our brains haven’t evolved much past a Stone Age mentality, where survival was our main concern. As a result, it makes sense that we would avoid any threatening situations and defend our existence.
Insurance News Net’s recent article, “What Human Behavior Tells Us About Estate Planning,” says that when people think of estate planning, they think about death, which is the ultimate threat. Because we’re programmed to secure our survival, thinking about our demise is counterintuitive. With this in mind, you can begin to see why more than half of Americans don’t have essential estate documents in place.
Some say that we have to be able to see and identify it, be motivated to act by pain or some negative stimulus and believe we can do something about it without feeling dumb in the process. However, estate planning hasn’t met any of these criteria. The need for planning feels remote, and, therefore, it isn’t visible or painful. Sometimes creating a comprehensive plan can be complicated and overwhelming, which can leave people feeling incapable and inept. The need to create an estate plan also feels chronic—a nagging problem people don’t want to address and want to avoid.
However, in the digital age, estate planning has become about more than just the systematic disposition of assets upon one’s death. With bank and email accounts, social media and other digital assets scattered throughout cyberspace, it has become necessary to find a way to connect our assets to us. There’s an immediate upside to spending time on organizing our financial lives: the peace of mind of knowing everything we have is accounted for. It’s intrinsically satisfying when we can bring our assets together under one virtual roof.
With comprehensive planning, we can benefit from being able to monitor every account with ease, giving us a full financial picture at a glance.
In addition, today we can capture stories and memories to create a living, breathing legacy. Remember, your legacy is about more than the money left behind—it’s also about sharing the values and valuables with the right people at the right time.
When we think about legacy planning as part of our lives, we change the narrative and estate planning becomes visible, solvable and non-chronic. It becomes something people embrace rather than avoid. Therefore, think of estate planning that way and speak with one of our experienced attorneys to be certain your plan is comprehensive and up to date.
