Why Is the Attorney's Number Still on Your Refrigerator?
August 17, 2026
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Show Notes
Eddie and Betty's Conversation
Welcome back to The American Retirement Advisor. I'm Betty, and Eddie's here with me in the studio today, which is always a good thing because we are going into some territory that I think a lot of people are going to recognize immediately. Eddie, I want to start with the image that opens the piece we're talking about today, because I think every single person listening right now just pictured something on their own refrigerator.
Ha, glad to be here. And yes, that opening stopped me cold when I read the piece this morning. The card. The one from a seminar, or from a neighbor after her husband passed, or the one your accountant wrote a name on the back of. Up under a magnet. Six years ago. Maybe ten.
It survived two cleanouts and a new refrigerator. I laughed at that line, but it's also a little uncomfortable, because I think most of us have a version of that card. It's not always an estate attorney's card. Sometimes it's an insurance agent, sometimes it's a financial planner. But the estate planning one is, I think, the guiltiest version of it.
And Ian Schaeffer is honest about that. He opens the whole thing by saying he woke up that same week with his own list of calls he'd been avoiding. He's not writing from a mountaintop. He's just offering the small push he'd want someone to give him. I appreciated that framing. It takes the finger-wagging out of it.
So let's get into why. Because I think the instinct is to say people put this off because it's complicated, or expensive. But the survey data in this article kind of blows that up.
It does. Five thousand American adults, asked directly: why don't you have an estate plan? And the number one answer was not cost. It was not confusion. It was simply that they hadn't gotten around to it. That's the honest answer. Not 'I don't understand trusts.' Just 'I haven't done it yet.'
And then you layer on top of that the fact that seventy-three percent of Americans said estate planning is personally important to them. Seventy-three percent. That's nearly three in four people saying this matters to me.
And the follow-through tells the other half of the story. Fifty-six percent of those same adults have none of the five core documents. Not a will. Not a trust. Not a medical power of attorney. Nothing signed. And the share of Americans who have a will went down last year, from thirty-one percent to twenty-six percent. The trend is headed the wrong way.
That shrinking number is what gets me. It's not like the information got harder to find. If anything it's easier. So what's going on underneath this?
Ian Schaeffer lays out three reasons, and I think he gets them right. The first one is the most honest: the call makes it real. Dialing that number means saying out loud, to a stranger, that you are not going to be here forever. Nobody wakes up wanting to schedule that.
It's not a dentist appointment. You can tell yourself the dentist is just about teeth. This one is about something bigger, and I think people feel that weight the second they pick up the phone.
But here's what Schaeffer points out, and it's worth sitting with: the avoidance doesn't actually do anything. The mortality doesn't go away. Only the plan does. You're not protecting yourself from the thing you're afraid of. You're just removing the safety net.
Say that again slowly, because I want listeners to really take that in.
The mortality doesn't go away. Only the plan does. Avoiding the call doesn't buy you more time. It just means the time you have isn't protected.
Okay. What's the second reason?
Fear of showing up unprepared. Seventeen percent of people in the survey said they didn't know where to start. And I think what's underneath that is a quiet worry that they'll get on the phone or sit down with an attorney and get asked for documents they can't find, or decisions they haven't made yet. Like there's homework they were supposed to do first.
Which is so understandable, because that's how most of us think about professional appointments. You prepare before you go to your accountant. You gather your documents. So why wouldn't an estate attorney be the same?
But the article is clear on this: you don't prepare for the first meeting. The first meeting is where preparing begins. That's a direct line from Ian Schaeffer's piece and I think it's the most liberating thing in the whole article. You are not behind. You are not underprepared. That first conversation is just a conversation.
What about cost? Because I know that comes up a lot.
Fifteen percent of people in the survey cited cost as the reason they hadn't started. And Schaeffer's response to that is really sharp. He says a trust costs a known number you can ask about in the very first phone call. But probate for an unplanned estate costs an unknown number your family discovers later, in fees, in months, and in each other.
That last part is the one nobody prices in. We all know families that went through a loss without a clear plan and came out the other side with damage that had nothing to do with money.
The relational cost of ambiguity is enormous. And Schaeffer puts it plainly: if you've built real wealth, the math is lopsided. The cost of the plan is fixed. The cost of not having one scales with everything you own. The more you've accumulated, the more expensive that gap becomes.
Okay, so let's make this practical. A listener right now has that card on their fridge. They've been meaning to call. What does Ian Schaeffer say happens when you pick up the phone?
He walks through it almost word for word. You dial. Someone at the front desk answers. And you say one sentence: 'My spouse and I would like to talk with someone about a will and a trust. What does a first meeting look like?' That's it. That's the whole call. You get offered a time. You're not quizzed. You're not billed. You're not committing to anything.
I wonder if people would believe that. Because I think the mental picture of calling an attorney's office involves all this formality and expectation. Like they're going to want to know things you don't have ready.
And the piece pushes back on that directly. He says in the first meeting itself, you bring your questions, they talk about your family, a rough picture of what you own, and what you want to happen. And they have heard every version of 'we know, we should have done this years ago.' You cannot surprise them. He puts it perfectly: you are their normal morning.
Which takes all the embarrassment out of it. You're not the outlier who waited too long. You're just a person sitting down to start.
And the first conversation with an estate planning attorney, he mentions, usually takes less time than a haircut. Less time than a haircut. That's the scale we're talking about.
Now I want to get into the part of the article that, honestly, I think is the emotional center of it. Because Ian Schaeffer talks about the calls that advisors remember, and it's a pattern that comes up again and again in their work.
This is the part that I think will resonate with a lot of our listeners. He describes calls that start with a diagnosis. A couple has been meaning to do this for twenty years. Then a doctor says something that makes the timeline stop being theoretical. And they call that same week.
And he's careful to say those calls end well. Confusion at the start, a clear plan by the end, relief in their voices you can hear from across the room. The documents get done.
But they get done in the hardest month of that family's life. At the exact moment they have the least strength to carry one more thing. And that's the point he's making. This work can be done on an ordinary sunny week. When it's just paperwork and coffee. Not when everything else is also on fire.
There's something almost tender about that framing. He's not scaring people. He's saying: let me take that weight off the table for you now, so it's not sitting there waiting for the worst possible moment.
And then he gets personal. He writes about growing up watching his father sit with families in the worst weeks of their lives. And the difference he saw was this: the families who had documents grieved. The families who didn't have documents grieved, and then they went to court.
That's a line that I keep coming back to. Because grief is already an enormous thing. Adding legal complexity, family conflict, court dates, to that kind of pain is something most of us can't really fully imagine until it's happening.
And Schaeffer makes a point about what happens if you never make a plan. He puts it directly: the state already has an estate plan for you. It runs through a courtroom, on the state's schedule, by the state's formula. And you would not choose a single line of it.
It's the default nobody picks on purpose. But by not acting, that's the choice people make.
Which is why the inaction isn't neutral. It's a decision. It's just a decision you made by not making one.
Before we get to the action steps, the piece also points people toward something for the inheritance side specifically.
The BeneficiaryBox. It's a resource where families can gather what the trust will one day hold, so the people they love aren't left searching. Schaeffer says they're going to spend a whole day on that later in the week. So that's coming.
This is part of a five-part series called The Fridge List. That name will stick with people. The things we put off in retirement that turn out to be smaller than the dread we attach to them. And today is day one.
Tomorrow in the series is about what actually happens in the trust meeting itself. And apparently the people who finally sit down for it almost always say the same thing on the way out. I'm curious what that thing is.
We'll get there tomorrow. But let's come back to the practical steps Ian Schaeffer lays out for today, because he's very specific about what he's asking people to do. And it's genuinely small.
Step one: walk to the refrigerator and take the card down. He says holding it counts as starting. That's not a joke. He means it. The physical act of picking it up and not putting it back is meaningful.
Step two is to dial and say the sentence. 'We would like to talk with someone about a will and a trust. What does a first meeting look like?' And if it goes to voicemail, leave that same sentence and your number. He's clear: done still counts.
And if you don't have a card, he says that's even easier. If your family works with American Retirement Advisors, call the office and say that sentence to them. Making introductions to estate planning attorneys is part of what they do every week. That's a real on-ramp if you don't know where to start.
And then step four is just: put the appointment on the calendar and stop. You don't have to figure anything else out today. He says appointments have a way of keeping themselves. Once it's on the calendar, the momentum does the rest.
There's also a softer entry point for people who aren't quite ready to dial yet. He mentions a guide they wrote called Before Death Do Us Part, about getting these affairs in order while both partners are here to do it together. It's available at no cost. He suggests reading it with your coffee tomorrow morning.
I like that he offers the softer step without letting it become an excuse to keep waiting. He says a small start still counts as starting. Not 'read this instead of calling.' Read this and let it walk you the rest of the way to the phone.
There's no version of this article where the goal is to feel more informed and stay put. The whole thing is oriented toward one outcome: you make the call.
Let me ask you something, because I think some of our listeners who are maybe a little later in retirement might be sitting here thinking: I've gotten this far without it. My kids are grown. Is this still as urgent?
If anything, the stakes get higher as you get further into retirement, not lower. Because what's accumulated is greater. The questions about how assets pass, who makes decisions if you can't, what happens to the people you love, those questions don't get simpler with age. They get more layered. And the part about the state's default plan applies no matter how old you are or how much you have.
The state doesn't care that your children are in different financial situations, or that you have a grandchild with special needs, or that one of your kids was closer to you than the others. The formula doesn't know any of that.
Right. It's a blunt instrument. Your estate plan is the place where you get to say what you mean. Who gets what, in what form, on what timeline, with what protections. That's the whole point of having one.
And the specific mechanics of how those decisions get structured, how a trust is set up, what a medical power of attorney covers, those are genuinely questions for your advisor and your attorney. I wouldn't want anyone going in and guessing at the details.
Not even a little bit. The framework is universal: do the plan, do it now, do it while it's easy. The structure of how you do it is specific to your family, your assets, your state. Those details are exactly what the advisors and attorneys are there for.
Let's come back to the gap one more time, because I keep thinking about it. Seventy-three percent of people say it matters. Twenty-six percent have done the basic thing. That gap isn't explained by people not caring.
Schaeffer calls it a push problem, not a knowledge problem. And I think that's exactly the right diagnosis. Most people who haven't done this are not confused about whether it matters. They're just waiting for something to finally tip them into action.
And maybe today the push is as simple as learning that the first conversation takes less time than a haircut. That might be what finally makes the call feel possible.
Or maybe it's just picturing that card that's been up there under the magnet for six years. At some point the dread of the thing is so much bigger than the thing itself. And the only way to find out is to do it.
Ian Schaeffer ends the piece with a line I want to leave people with: the card has waited long enough.
Simple and true.
It really is. And if you're sitting here and that card is real, go pick it up. If you don't have a card and your family works with us, call the office. Say the sentence. One appointment changes the whole picture. That's it for today on The American Retirement Advisor. We'll be back tomorrow with day two of The Fridge List, and if what Ian Schaeffer wrote is any preview, you'll want to hear what people say on the way out of that trust meeting. In the meantime, if today's conversation brought up questions about your own situation, that's what our advisors are here for. Sit down with someone who knows your picture. That one conversation, just like the one with the estate attorney, is almost always smaller than you think it will be. We'll see you tomorrow.