I love watching baseball. The local ballfield was about a half mile from my house where I grew up. Every Saturday morning in the spring and summer, I woke up to the sounds of the announcer over the PA system.

I was lucky enough to work for the Cleveland Indians during my career. I watched batting practice whenever I wanted and knew the secret identity of the team mascot "Slider." But I especially loved the media team digging through statistics books to find that quirky stat for the announcer. "Well, Matt, the person batting third in every Saturday road game in odd years when it was raining has struck out 88% of the time." How can you not love that?

Statistics—never my favorite subject in school—are fascinating when applied to baseball, or real life. Stats can be interesting, or surprising or even sad. For example, different polls say between 25-75% of Americans have never created their will.  

Here are a few more stats from the WealthCounsel 2017 Estate Planning Industry Trends survey:

The top three reasons people chose to create their estate plan:

67% to avoid Probate

65% to avoid chaos/discord among family and beneficiaries

38% to protect children from mismanaging their inheritance

73% of people who created their estate plan were married with children

44% of people who created their plan had a net worth of $1 million or less

52% of people who planned were between the ages of 50-69

Where do you fall among these statistics? Are you in the group of Americans who have created a plan to avoid probate and take care of their family to the best of their ability? Or are you still one of the 25-75% of Americans who haven't yet picked up the bat to take a swing.

A final statistic to remember...

One hundred percent of people will die.

Are you ready to play ball?