“It couldn’t possibly happen to me.”
Invincibility. This subconscious thought sits in the back of our minds every day. You hear stories of drunk drivers wrecking a vehicle, homeowners falling from a ladder and landing in just the wrong way to cause a hospital visit, or sudden severe illnesses drastically changing the lives of seemingly healthy people. Tragedies like these happen more often than we think, but we brush them off because “It couldn’t possibly happen to me.” We all succumb to this thought. But no group is more guilty of it than young adults.
As I’m writing this article, I am twenty-eight years old. A college graduate just starting his career with a beautiful wife and plans to have kids soon. That sentence describes thousands of people with their whole lives ahead of them. We’re often bogged down with work, paying off our school debts, mortgages, and raising kids to worry about our future. This makes perfect sense. Today’s young adults live in the now and live that life fearlessly. We young adults often forget the reality that life is short, and we can’t take our possessions with us. This collective forgetfulness for people ages eighteen to forty is the “invincibility of youth.”
Invincibility’s Impact
The invincibility mindset is a major impact on our world. We ignore our day to day drives falsely believing that they are safer than a big road trip. That’s not the case. The National Library of Medicine found in a study conducted from 2005 to 2010, that 77% of motor vehicle collisions happened within ten miles from a person’s home.
In 2022, a study from National Center for Health Statistics showed that 163.4 out of every 100,000 Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 died. For ages 35 to 44, that number increased to 255.4 out of 100,000. For perspective, the chances of hitting the Powerball lottery jackpot on any given drawing is 1 out of 292,201,338.
77% of motor vehicle collisions happened within ten miles from a person’s home.
Overcoming Invincibility
Now that we have a general understanding about our lack of invincibility, let’s reel in our focus to why this is important to young adults. Research on young adults and views on estate planning shows the invincibility mindset in action. In 2024, only a quarter of adults ages 18 to 34 have a Will. In terms of motivating factors, 43% of Americans would get a Will after a medical diagnosis or health concern, 17% would after a loved one died, and 21% would get a Will if they had a new addition to the family.
Despite all these factors that push Americans to get an Estate Plan, 40% of Americans don’t think they need a Will because they are too poor or don’t have enough assets and wealth to pass on.
[Estate planning is] all about your choice to say how you want your life to be.
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