Lock Into Your Estate Planning Goals Now So That You Don’t Need to Make a New Year’s Resolution to Revise Your Estate Plan in 2026

People who are old enough to remember a time when you had to wait for your favorite song to play on the radio love to deride the habits and attitudes of Generation Z, the young adults born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They don’t seem as emotionally attached to their professional goals as we were, and they seem to lack interest in the photo opportunities that we once considered rites of passage; they snap selfies all day long and compulsively photograph their food, but they do not aspire to pose for their driver’s license photos or wedding photos, like we did. Financial uncertainty has always been the norm for Gen Z, and now financial uncertainty is coming for us, too, so perhaps we should take a page from their playbook. Today’s retirees are placing their houses in trusts, because the house is the only asset they have, and Medicaid is their only option for long-term care coverage, so the asset protection trust is the only way the next generation can inherit the family home instead of losing it to creditor claims during probate. For help putting your panicked feelings about your estate plan to good use, contact a Dade City estate planning lawyer.

The Rise of the Fourth Quarter Lock In

Gen Z is always doing ridiculous stuff online, but they might be onto something with their newest trend. It is called locking in, and it is when you disengage from your distracting devices and focus on your goals. A recent report on Vox describes young adults engaging in a fourth quarter lock in, where they pursue their goals intensively during the last few months of the year, so that by New Year’s, they can tell everyone what they achieved. This seems like less of a recipe for disappointment than setting lofty goals at the beginning of January, only for them to fizzle by the time the groundhog sees its shadow.

If you do this with your estate plan, then you will get to spend the holidays bragging about all the estate planning you have accomplished, instead of worrying about having to do it in the new year. For example, quietly set the intention to get as much done on your estate plan as you can, and then reread your will and draft a new version if necessary. Set up a revocable trust if this is something you have been planning to do; it is better to type up the trust instrument now, when no one knows you are doing it, then in January after you have announced your plans to everyone. You can even do fun estate planning tasks, like giving your family cash gifts in celebration of the annual gift tax exclusion.

Contact a Florida Estate Planning Attorney About Estate Planning for People Who Are Terrible at New Year’s Resolutions

An estate planning attorney can help you revise your estate plan now, before the procrastination bug bites you again.  Contact The Law Office of Laurie R. Chane in Dade City, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

vox.com/culture/464023/great-lock-in-tiktok-hard-75-winter-arc-gen-z