Trust & Will CEO Cody Barbo says rising financial stress is reshaping estate planning

Sarah Wolak: Trust & Will’s 2026 Financial Advisor Report goes into how estate planning is becoming a part of a larger financial advice conversation. How does that fit in with reverse mortgages?

Cody Barbo: The statistic that we have at the top of our survey is that 54% of Americans are having the highest financial anxiety they’ve ever had. It’s increased over the last 12 months. Everything’s more expensive; everybody knows this. It’s universal. You go to every pocket of the country and all levels of wealth — low, middle, even high-income earners — are dealing with more financial stress than they’ve ever had before.

When you look at the baby boomer segment, the majority of homeowners have completely paid off their mortgages and own their homes. It’s generally boomers, and the value of those homes has increased exponentially over the last 10, 20, 30 years.

They may have bought it for $100,000, $200,000 or $300,000, and that house might be worth five, 10, 15 times what they originally paid for it. So that’s a huge amount of liquidity for them to do a handful of things. They could use it for home renovations. A lot of older parents help their adult children by taking out a loan or taking out equity in their home to help them buy their first home.

And then, in addition to that, there’s just the cost of living. You have seniors with longer lifespans. Longevity is in mind, so they actually may have dipped too far into their retirement savings and have to dip into their home to get that equity.

I think it’s really consistent with the motivation. As much as people’s financial stress is going up, fortunately, people’s motivation to set up an estate plan is at the highest it’s ever been. People still aren’t doing it, though. That’s still the biggest blocker. They don’t know where to start.

Wolak: When you say that a lot of people haven’t started estate planning yet, do you think it’s because they don’t recognize that they need it? When you hear the phrase “estate planning,” you might think of a different lifestyle because “estate” is a luxurious word. Do you think that holds a lot of people back from taking that step?

Barbo: Yeah, it’s a lack of education. It’s a lack of awareness. We started this business eight years ago [and] we’ve got over a million people who have started their estate planning journey with us. But to be direct, I think they still don’t know where to start, and they need that motivation to get started.

Why this report is interesting is the number we have here — 27% would prefer to build an estate plan with a financial adviser. It’s the trust factor and having someone to sit down with, right? Affording the $3,000 to $5,000 attorney cost — a lot of families can’t afford it, or they don’t want to spend that much, but they’re willing to do it online.

There’s this hand-holding process involved. It’s why we offer really high-touch customer support. We have humans available five days a week. We have an attorney network. We have almost 500 estate attorneys across all 50 states that customers can work with.

But financial advisers — again, parallel to real estate professionals — are trusted individuals. So it’s really special for your audience to hear that the parallel is, if they’re not a financial adviser — which most of them probably are not — but the statistic here that 27% of customers would be willing to build an estate plan with a financial adviser, that same thing would parallel over to a real estate professional.

That real estate professional could say, “Hey, I helped you find your home, helped you sell your home, helped you with this reverse mortgage. I would love to help you protect your legacy and help secure your future with an estate plan.”

Wolak: So if it’s the younger folks who are more trusting of housing professionals, would it be the older folks who want to actually sit down with a financial adviser? Or are they just apprehensive about the whole process?

Barbo: Yeah, the older ones actually trust more like a lawyer. The human piece maps. It’s a very personal process to go through estate planning. It’s not just about assets. It’s things like, “Do you want to be resuscitated or not?” Who can make medical and financial decisions for you if you’re incapacitated?”

And then the most uncomfortable part is you have to think about your own death — burial, cremation. Human composting is legal in seven states now. It’s a wild thought process to go through.

Wolak: You bring up the factor of trust and sitting down with somebody, being comfortable with it, and that very much mirrors the reverse mortgage process.

Barbo: That’s why our platform is built for everybody. It’s a pretty even bell curve of millennials, Gen X and boomers. Our youngest customers are 18. Obviously, they’re setting up things like a health care proxy, or their parents are helping them set it up when they go off to college.

Our oldest customer is 102. Cradle to grave is kind of how we think about it.

When you think of reverse mortgages, it’s going to skew older because they’re thinking, “We’ve run out of cash. We need to tap into the biggest equity we have, which is our home value.” Usually it’s for a specific reason. It’s to renovate the home, help their kids, or cover health care costs if they have major surgeries or a diagnosis.

Usually it’s an urgent need, not “let’s just take out some cash because, why not?” And I think the interest that we have is the human support side.

Gen X, right now, is the most underserved generation of estate planning. That was pretty surprising data, and they’re in the real thick of it as the sandwich generation. Most Gen Xers are mid-40s to late 50s right now; they have kids who are still minors at home, but they also have aging parents that they’re starting to take care of. And Gen Xers are old enough that they may have their home fully paid off.

So when we think of a reverse mortgage, it might be because, “Hey, we need to build a granny flat in the backyard, an ADU in the backyard. We need to extend the second primary master bedroom on the first floor because mom or dad can’t go up and down the stairs anymore. They can’t take care of themselves full time anymore. We need to move them into the house.” This is super common too.