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Some High-Income Americans Admit to Organizational Problems

By Allison Bell

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Most of the high-income Americans who took a recent life planning survey told the survey team that they’re good at just about everything.

But some admitted that they’re not as organized as they could be.

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Everplans runs an online document vault service, which can help people save and organize photos and documents.

It commissioned a survey, of about 1,000 U.S. adults, that was conducted in late April.

The goal was to see how COVID-19 is affecting the participants’ efforts to plan for the unexpected.

Abby Schneiderman, Everplans’ chief executive officer, said in a comment included in the survey report release announcement that preparing for the unexpected helps people regain a sense of control when the unexpected happens.

The survey findings, and the COVID-19 crisis, “are a reminder of how important it is for all of us to be well-prepared for unexpected events,” Schneiderman said.

One section of the Everplans survey report breaks out the answers by household income.

Everplans attracted about 205 participants in the top income category, for people with $100,000 or more in annual household income.

The survey team presented a list of five major preparation activities and asked the participants, “For each of the following you are responsible for, how well would you say you do them?”

Participants as a whole were most confident about their efforts to prepare for emergencies, and least confident about how well they’ve made end-of-life plans.

About 23% told the survey team they had performed “not well” and making end-of-life plans. Only 13% said they prepared for unexpected events, such as the COVID-19 crisis, in a way that was not well.

People with $100,000 or more in household income gave noticeably different answers.

For “making long-term financial planning and retirement plans” for example, just 6% of the high-income survey participants said they had not done that well.

But 15% admitted that that had not organized their estates well, and 16% admitted that they had not made end-of-life plans well.

But Everplans has published statistics suggesting that some participants exaggerated their financial preparation efforts, or did not understand all of the questions well enough to answer accurately.

The survey team fund, for example, that 21% of the participants said they had taken out disability insurance. The American Association of Long-Term Care Insurance has reported that only about 8 million U.S. adults, or about 4% of all adults, have long-term care insurance.

— Read Everplans: A Tech Tool That Could Be an Estate Planning Game-Changer, on ThinkAdvisor.

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Allison Bell

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