The companies that want young people to think about death

This spring, digital estate-planning company Trust & Will surveyed Americans and found something surprising: a third of Gen Z said they had a will or trust. In other words, a good chunk of people under 27 years old — who stereotypically have few assets and live like they’ll never die — have seriously contemplated death.

Looking at their own data, just 2% of Trust & Will customers were in that age group. Even if the survey is a little off, or if young people are counting a list in their Notes app as a will, the company still views it as a huge missed opportunity. Young people who make wills will likely update them later in life and are prime candidates for other financial services down the line. 

The trick for Trust & Will, as well as other financial services and estate-planning firms hoping to go after a younger demographic, is demonstrating to young people why they’d want a will in the first place. It can be an uphill battle even to get those much closer to death to plan for when they’ve left this mortal coil, estate-planning experts told me, let alone people with meager possessions and their whole lives ahead of them. 

For the most part, these companies are trying to meet young people where they are. That means approaching them at transitional periods — leaving home, going to college, or getting their first professional job — with influencer campaigns on TikTok and Instagram that explain how a will or trust might be relevant to them.

Even if they don’t have a ton of assets, they may want a say over what happens to their crypto or social-media accounts when they die. They may also want control over what happens with their debt. And for the assets they do have, perhaps they want those to go to someone in particular or to charity. The marketing reminds young people they might want certain healthcare directives in place in the event of their untimely demise. 

“Creating these relatable scenarios and delivering them in a fun way, to just even open those conversations, is the right path for us,” Dale Sperling, Trust & Will CMO, said. 

One common touchstone for people of all ages, she said, is pets.

“Something like 93% of our estate plans have a designation for a pet,” Sperling said. “It’s relevant for everyone.”

Preventing family fighting is also broadly relatable.

“Even if you are Gen Z, everyone has a story like: your father doesn't talk to his brother because Aunt Joan died and left everything to the brother,” she said.

The sell gets easier as people have children, and they consider who would care for their kids in their absence. Some 36% of millennials have wills, making up 27% of Trust & Will customers. The so-called sandwich generation, caring for their children at the same time as their aging parents, is quicker to recognize that what happens after their deaths is important.

Overall, though, getting young people to sign up for wills and trusts is likely not as difficult as it once would’ve been, thanks to the particularities of younger generations.

For one, they lived through COVID-19.

“That generation of people is taking stock in a way that maybe they didn't prior,” Matt Watson, the 33-year-old CEO of financial-management app Origin, said. 

“I never thought about mortality in my late 20s until COVID, where you're wearing a mask to go to the grocery store,” Watson said. “Over a million people over the age of 50 passed away due to COVID, and I think it led our generation to this place of, ‘Wow, that's a scary thing. I want to get my financial house in order.’”

Some 58% of all estate plans on Origin were created by people ages 30-40, while another 8% were completed by those under 29.

Estate planning “was something that we were loosely discussing as an item that people should consider,” he said. “As we've seen it resonate with this cohort, we've made this a primary recommendation.”

Younger people these days may be more financially savvy than their predecessors

Paul Brahim, a financial planner and president-elect of the Financial Planning Association, says he’s seen an uptick in younger people interested in wills and financial planning: working with robo-advisors, contributing to retirement accounts, and being “deeply concerned about debt.”

“People in their 20s and 30s are becoming much more aware of personal finance than people in their late 40s, early 50s,” Brahim said. “That generation of people lived in a world of ‘I'll never have what my parents had, so I'm just going to live for the moment.’ They're not necessarily as tuned in until they get to their mid-50s, and then they go, ‘Oh God, I'm not going to work for the rest of my life. I better figure this out.’”

Perhaps, he said, young people are seeing what’s happening with their parents and want something different for themselves.

He recently met with a 24-year-old leaving her job in finance to work at a nonprofit. He’s working with her and her attorney to draft a will that includes her dog and crypto assets.

And then there’s the interwebs.

Younger people are more internet savvy, and the latest generation of wills and trusts can be completed online — often for a lot cheaper than it costs to visit an attorney — with sites like FreeWill or LegalZoom. 

Scott Keegan, COO at Gertsema Wealth Advisors, said his firm has recently begun using Trust & Will to create estate plans for younger clients. 

Previously, when he recommended estate-planning attorneys, “maybe a fourth of the time they would actually go set it all up,” he said. “For those three-quarters that wouldn't, cost was the main thing that prevented them from taking the next step.” 

In other words, young people might’ve been interested in getting their estate in order previously, but the cost put it out of reach.

Keegan added that his older clients are more comfortable having an attorney walk them through the process.

“I think younger people are a little bit more open to the idea of, hey, it can be done online.”