| Q&A with Jay Zigmont of Childfree Trust
| Jay Zigmont founded Childfree Trust and, before that, the financial planning firm Childfree Wealth. A former paramedic and healthcare administrator, he has spent years studying how people without children plan for late life. The National Institute on Aging just awarded Childfree Trust a grant to develop and test an AI-powered planning tool specifically for adults aging without children and to explore ways of overcoming decision paralysis.
“Solo aging is going to reshape how we think about planning for late life,” says Mary Furlong, who advises investors in the longevity ecosystem, “and Jay Zigmont is among the first to build a service for people who have no family to make decisions on their behalf.”
Zigmont spoke with Aging in America News about demographic trends, charitable giving, and what happens to people who can’t afford professional help. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How big is the population of people aging without children, and is it growing?
I use “child-free” to mean people who don’t have kids and never plan to, whether by choice or not. That’s about 25% of the U.S. Compared with baby boomers and the generations before them, permanent childlessness has roughly doubled, and with millennials and beyond, it’s going to double again. Among adults under 49 who don’t have kids, 47% say they never will.
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↑ Jay Zigmont on the origins of Childfree Trust
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Are they also less likely to be married?
Yes. About 35% of child-free people will never marry. Among child-free people over 55, about 60% are legally single. They may have never married, or divorced, or been widowed, or they have a partner they never legally married. So you’re talking about a lot of people aging without kids, without a spouse, or both.
What does that mean for planning?
Less than 20% of child-free people have a will, and the number one reason is that they have nobody to appoint. The numbers are about the same for medical and financial powers of attorney. In the general population, about 30% of people don’t have a will, but parents typically write one when they have their first child or buy a house. Child-free people aren’t having kids or buying houses at the same rate. They’re renting. And if you don’t have the paperwork in place, you run the risk of a court-appointed conservator or guardian, which nobody wants. You also can’t appoint someone after the stroke or the accident. You have to plan early.
How does charitable giving figure in?
Child-free people give to charities at about three times the rate of parents. That’s not a judgment, it’s just a fact. When you have a child, the default is that you’re passing money to the next generation. It doesn’t mean you have to, but it gives you an answer. Without it, some of the people I work with get stuck on what to do with their money and what they want their legacy to be. Charities will sometimes manage part of the estate process or serve as your executor if you have enough money, but they’re not making decisions for you. And if you’re charitably minded, you’re better off giving while you’re alive, so you get the tax benefits and see what happens with your money.
What happens to people who can’t afford a planner?
There’s not much. At every panel I do with Sara Zeff Geber, who coined the term “solo aging,” someone asks what to do if you don’t have the money, and we look at each other and say, “There’s not much.” You’ll occasionally find a small nonprofit, but the area agencies on aging don’t really have a plan for this. They tell me they love what we’re doing, but their clients can’t afford it.
Read our interview with retirement coach and author Sara Zeff Geber
An estate plan from an attorney runs about $3,000, and a trust company serving in these roles might charge $10,000 to $30,000 a year. Long-term care is worse: about $125,000 a year on average in a skilled nursing facility, with men spending 2.2 years there and women 3.7. Medicare doesn’t cover it, and Medicaid only does after you’re broke.
Community models like the Golden Girls idea are good structures, but one of you will outlive everybody else, so it works better if it’s multigenerational. The reality is that as a solo ager, you need enough money to build a care team around you, or you’re at the whims of the government systems.
Do people with children run into some of the same issues?
Yes. I get asked a lot, “What about this for me as a parent?” What I’m hearing is that many people would rather pay a professional than put that burden on family or friends. I was on a podcast where the host said, “I wake up each morning going, I killed my mother.” He knew what she wanted and what the power of attorney said, but he had to be the one to say pull the plug. He said, “I don’t want to put that on my kids. I don’t want to put that on anyone.” I think there’s probably a bigger group out there who can learn from what child-free people are doing to make the system work for them, and that makes it work better for everybody.
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