Meanwhile, some advisors are trying to help clients maximize their Social Security benefits. “We are holding Social Security workshops to help clients maximize what they get,” explains Courtney Livingston, a financial associate with Trivent Financial in Watertown, S.D.
The next largest group, 17.5 percent of those surveyed, thinks some other solution will be devised or nothing will be done. “Leaders will say the government should step in, but that they do not have the money,” says Peter Nerone of Great American Advisors in Cincinnati, Ohio, who has been in the financial industry for more than 15 years as an advisor to small-employer retirement plans.
He feels retiring employees should take their retirement money and buy an annuity or other product that will provide a lifetime payment.
“The Department of Labor needs to engage the public and the financial industry in addressing this need,” he says. “But once people realize there is no external help, they will have to find ways to make their own resources do more for them.”
Another advisor who asked not to be quoted by name says the government will not do anything because government leaders are incompetent and unable to deal with the crisis.
Others (15.5 percent) think the government will not act because such interference is un-American.
“We are coming to realize we cannot afford the entitlement programs we already have. To increase them will drive us to a welfare state, and I don’t think that is going to happen,” says Jim Butler, president of Butler Associates Financial Planners Inc., in St. Louis, Mo.
Only 12 percent of advisors think the government will impose a mandatory defined contribution retirement system similar to the one that exists in Australia.
Some advisors feel the defined contribution plans that have become the backbone of retirement savings for many Americans are part of what have gotten retirees into trouble. Anthony J. Pascazio of SF Advisors LLC in Basking Ridge, N.J., who advises retirement plan sponsors, says a few employers have gone back to defined benefit plans because they are actually cheaper in the long run for the employer and provide the employee with more security in retirement.