Your Inheritance Is Probably a Lot Smaller Than You Think

Sixty-eight percent of Millennials and Gen Z either have already received or expect to receive an inheritance — and they expect it to average around $320,000. That’s the finding from a widely-cited USA Today Blueprint survey, reported by CNBC, of nearly 1,300 Americans between 18 and 42. Here’s the number that should actually change how you plan your life: the real median inheritance — what the typical person who inherits anything actually receives — is under $50,000. Not close to $320,000. A sixth of it.

That gap is one thing. Here’s the part that makes it worse: while two-thirds of you are quietly banking on a payday that probably isn’t coming, Trust & Will’s 2026 Estate Planning Report, released April 7, 2026, found that 54% of Gen Z has zero estate planning documents of their own — no will, no trust, no healthcare directive, nothing. You’re waiting on money from people who might not have it to give, while doing nothing to protect the money you’re already making. That’s not two separate problems. That’s the same avoidance wearing two outfits.

The short version

What’s true	What it means for you
68% of Millennials/Gen Z expect an inheritance averaging $320,000 (USA Today Blueprint survey, via CNBC)	Most of your peers are building a financial plan around a number that’s likely fiction.
The actual median inheritance is under $50,000 (Wealthvieu, 2026)	A handful of massive inheritances drag the “average” way up. The typical heir gets a fraction of what you’re picturing.
56% of Americans have no estate plan at all — no will, trust, or healthcare directive (Trust & Will, 2026)	The generation you’re expecting money from may not have a plan to actually transfer it cleanly, or at all.
54% of Gen Z has zero estate planning documents of their own (Trust & Will, 2026)	You’re not just waiting on money. You’re not protecting the money and the people you already have.
Only 15% of Gen Z has a trust — nearly double Gen X’s 8% — but just 14% have a healthcare directive (Trust & Will, 2026)	Where you’re planning at all, it’s narrow. A trust for one specific asset, nothing for the moments that actually go wrong.

Why the number in your head is wrong

Here’s how the $320,000 figure gets into your head in the first place. You hear “Great Wealth Transfer” — the $124 trillion boomers and the Silent Generation are projected to pass down over the coming decades — and your brain does something reasonable but wrong: it divides a number that size by the number of people you know and assumes everyone gets a slice.

That’s not how wealth transfer works. It’s not evenly spread rainfall. It’s a handful of downpours over a small number of houses and a light mist over everyone else. A small share of high-net-worth households account for more than half of that $124 trillion. Most families aren’t in that group, including most families that love their kids very much and fully intend to leave them something.

So when you picture $320,000 landing in your account someday, you’re picturing the average of a wildly lopsided distribution — the same reason “average” income numbers always sound higher than what most people you know actually make. The median tells the truer story, and the median is under $50,000. For a real chunk of people, it’s under $10,000. For a lot of others, it’s nothing at all, because their parents are still paying off their own house at 68.

I’d rather hand you the boring, accurate number now than let you build a decade of decisions on a number a survey average made up.

What “planning around an inheritance” actually costs you

This isn’t just a math correction. It’s a warning about a specific kind of decision a lot of people your age are quietly making.

Maybe you’re not maxing out your Roth IRA because “there’ll be money later.” Maybe you’re comfortable carrying a little more credit card debt than you should because you’ve got a mental cushion that doesn’t exist yet. Maybe you haven’t started investing seriously in your 20s because some part of you is waiting for a lump sum to do the heavy lifting instead of time and compounding.

Every one of those decisions assumes a number that, statistically, is six times too high. And even for families who do leave something behind, the timing rarely helps you when you need it most. The average inheritance lands when the heir is in their fifties — long after the years when $50,000, let alone $320,000, would have changed the entire shape of your financial life. Financial nihilism — the “why bother, it’s rigged anyway” shrug — has a quieter cousin: financial optimism about money that was never coming. Both end the same way. You stop building because you think something else is going to build it for you.

The other half of the avoidance

Now flip to the Trust & Will numbers, because this is where the story stops being about your parents and starts being about you.

Fifty-four percent of Gen Z has no will, no trust, no power of attorney, no healthcare directive. Nothing. If something happens to you — a bad accident, a sudden illness, anything that leaves you unable to speak for yourself — a court decides who makes your medical decisions and who gets whatever you own. Not your partner if you’re not married. Not the friend who actually knows what you’d want. A judge, working off a formula, filling in for a conversation you never had.

And where Gen Z is planning, it’s oddly specific. Fifteen percent of you have a trust — nearly double the rate of Gen X — probably to protect one particular asset: crypto, a house down payment fund, something with a clear “who gets this” answer. But only 14% have a healthcare directive, the document that matters most if you’re 24 and end up in an ICU. You’re building a narrow fence around your money while leaving the door to your actual body and life wide open. That’s not planning. That’s picking the one task that felt manageable and skipping the one that felt too heavy to think about.

Here’s the thing I want you to sit with: a will costs an afternoon. A healthcare directive costs less than that. You’ve spent more time deciding on a phone plan than most of your generation has spent deciding who speaks for them if they can’t speak for themselves.

How much should you actually expect to inherit?

If you want an honest number instead of a survey-average fantasy, here’s how to build one in five minutes:

Ask directly, once. Not “how much money do you have,” but “do you have a will or a trust, and roughly what would I inherit if something happened to you tomorrow?” Uncomfortable for thirty seconds. Worth it for the next thirty years.
Assume nothing until you’ve seen a document. A verbal “you’ll get the house someday” isn’t a plan. It’s a hope, and hopes don’t hold up in probate court.
Check whether debt eats it first. Medical bills, a reverse mortgage, credit card debt — an estate pays its debts before anyone inherits anything. A house with a $200,000 balance left on it isn’t a $200,000 gift.
Plan your own life at zero. If something does come later, treat it as a bonus that accelerates a plan already working — not the plan itself.
Revisit it every few years. Circumstances change. A parent remarries, retires early, needs long-term care. The number you assumed at 24 might not exist at 34.

What to actually do this week

You can’t control what you inherit. You can control whether the people who need you are protected if something goes wrong, and that part is entirely in your hands.

Start with the document that matters most and takes the least time: a healthcare directive naming who can make medical decisions for you if you can’t. Then a basic will — not complicated, just clear, so your stuff and your wishes don’t end up in front of a stranger with a formula. If you’ve got assets worth protecting from probate, a trust is worth the afternoon it takes to set up, even at 25. And if anyone depends on your income at all, term life insurance is absurdly cheap right now and gets more expensive every year you wait.

None of this requires wealth. It requires an afternoon and the willingness to stop looking away from the parts of your financial life that feel too heavy to open. You already know what that avoidance costs you in your bank account — this is the same instinct, aimed at your future instead of your present.

I don’t say any of this to scare you off hope. Hope for an inheritance is fine. What’s not fine is building your twenties and thirties like that hope is a guarantee, while leaving the one thing you actually control — your own protection — completely undone. Do both honestly: expect less from the people who came before you, and build more for the people who’ll come after you.

The takeaway

The inheritance you’re picturing probably isn’t coming, at least not the size you think. The protection you haven’t set up for yourself, though — that one’s entirely up to you, and it’s overdue.