Retirement is 'severely' off-target 

Financial advisors say the economic crisis has not just crippled, but “severely jeopardized” their clients’ retirement security. According to Brinker Capital’s Retirement Indicator, 88 percent of advisors say their clients are off-track for a timely retirement, largely due to market depreciation.

Seventy-four percent say it will take at least one to five years for their clients to make up the retirement savings shortfall. Almost all advisors (97 percent) blame market depreciation, while 51 percent said their clients didn’t start saving soon enough and 47 percent noted “general procrastination” as a reason.

• 88 — Percent of advisors who say their clients are off-target for a timely retirement.
• 74 — Percent of advisors who say it will take at least one to five years for their clients to make up the retirement savings shortfall.
• 97 — Percent of advisors who blame market depreciation.

• • 12/31/2009 9:07:48 AM
  • Bill B
  • Advidsors should have seen this coming too
  • This is not a hindsight observation, but just a few major things I noticed during the years prior to the Oct. 2008 crash. 1) May of 2006, housing starts down almost 18% and continued to slow in the following months. 2) June 2006, Caterpillar announced worldwide sales would decline some 20%. 3) July 2006, Countrywide’s 300 million in losses, 4) Sept started the year long write off of billions in the financial sector. Lots of indicators and yet the market kept going up till December of 2007 as it did in 1999. Talk of the worst recession in decades was mentioned yet few took notice. If history showed that 9 of the last 11 recessions had avg. losses of 30% why did advisors keep their boomer clients in the market? The first three qrts of 2008 had declines of 10%. Moving their clients to a fixed position early may have affected the advisors income but would have helped their clients. Do they see the second dip in 2010 coming?