I find that getters and setters seem like pointless overhead when I have an idea that I want to test empirically as soon as possible, but if I don't, I end up with a lot of regret years later when I have to track down all the references and update them instead of just changing code in the one place.

I'm not a fan of lazy loading, but I know a lot of people are, and using the getter/setter pattern also enables fairly straightforward ways to lazy-load properties from persistent storage (or add that capability down the road if it becomes advantageous).