NAIFA's Carroll Golden recently shared a striking insight that should give every financial professional pause. According to new Pew Research, Americans are three times more likely to say they would prefer to live in the past rather than the future. Only 14% chose the future.

At first glance, that preference may sound philosophical or even harmless. But for advisors working with families every day, it has real consequences.

As Carroll notes, we are entering an era defined by three simultaneous transfers:

• The Great Wealth Transfer of financial assets
• The Great Stuff Transfer of possessions, property, and personal meaning
• The Great Responsibility Transfer, including caregiving, decision-making, and emotional labor

These transitions are not simply technical exercises. They are deeply human, emotional, and often uncomfortable. And when clients emotionally resist the future, planning stalls.

Resistance to estate or long-term care planning is often rooted in nostalgia. Delayed family conversations frequently stem from fear of change. Caregiving responsibilities are routinely absent from plans because they represent an “invisible future” many would rather not acknowledge.

Yet avoiding the future does not stop it from arriving.

As Carroll explores in her book, “Leading in the New Retirement Era,” today’s advisors must create space for layered conversations across generations, across roles, and across differing perspectives on time itself. Planning must evolve beyond products and projections to address longevity, caregiving, health, family dynamics, and purpose.

This future-focused leadership is being built through NAIFA’s Knowledge Centers, of which Carroll serves as Executive Director. These Centers exist to equip financial professionals with the education, insights, and peer connections needed to address exactly the kinds of challenges Carroll describes.

The Lifetime Healthcare Center brings together professionals focused on healthcare planning across the lifespan, recognizing that longevity, health events, and care decisions are inseparable from sound financial strategies. Within that Center, the Medicare Collective and Limited and Extended Care Planning Center (LECP) Collective provide targeted resources and collaboration for advisors working at the intersection of aging, healthcare systems, and family responsibility.

Meanwhile, the Insurance and Retirement Estate Planning (IREAP) Knowledge Center supports advanced planning professionals navigating the increasingly complex worlds of retirement income, insurance-based strategies, and estate planning. IREAP fosters multidisciplinary collaboration among advisors, attorneys, and CPAs, precisely the kind of cross-functional thinking required in an era of overlapping transfers and extended lifespans.

In a time when many clients would rather look backward, financial professionals have an opportunity and a responsibility to guide them forward. Through leaders like Carroll Golden and communities like NAIFA’s Knowledge Centers, the profession is building the future-ready mindset today’s clients desperately need.

The question for advisors is no longer whether they are seeing “future hesitation” in their conversations. The real question is how they will lead clients through it and who they will partner with to do it well.