Worried about attracting millennial clients? Forget them. Thinking about Generation X? Hold your horses, according to Melody Juge, a retirement planner who says that most Americans under the age of 50 have no need of financial advice.

Of course, Juge, president of Flat Rock, N.C.-based Life Income Wealth Management and advisor at hybrid RIA CoreCap Advisors, has never had any qualms about going against the grain during her 34 years of industry experience.

“If someone calls me for advice, that’s what I tell them,” Juge says. “Everyone I work with is over 50. My industry wants me to say that everybody needs an advisor, but I don’t think they do.”

By trying to push services on Generation Xers and millennials that they might not need, advisors risk causing more harm to the financial services industry’s image, Juge says.

“The industry is at a point where nobody trusts it anymore,” Juge says. “It’s all about numbers and assets under management, but we often forget that there are lives on the other side of those dollars.

Young people shouldn’t be burdened with the cares of financial planning, Juge says, unless they’ve accumulated a certain amount of wealth.

“Why do you want to have a 20- or 30-something man or woman who is full of life, creativity and forward thinking to be focused on the end of their lives?” Juge asks. “In most cases, savings should be automated and out of mind.”

Encouraging millennials and their counterparts to find advisors may harm their ability to save.

“Advisors aren’t free,” Juge says. “When people are in their 20s and 30s and just starting to earn money, why would we want them to spend one to two percent paying for an advisor when they should be accumulating?”

Instead, Juge says that young people should be encouraged to take a do-it-yourself approach: contributing enough to a 401(k) to ensure an employer match and placing the rest of their savings into a Roth IRA using an actively managed, no-load mutual fund as its core holding.

“I think index funds are broken,” Juge says. “When the market goes down, they’re more seriously impacted, there’s no downside protection. A well-managed mutual fund where the expense ratio is less than 1% seems like a better solution. There’s always an investment du jour, but if the index funds were so wonderful and absolutely perfect, every single person would be invested in them and there wouldn’t be anything else left."

Juge believes in a three-tiered retirement planning approach. At the age of 55, clients enter the preservation phase of their careers, where they should find advisors who actively manage portfolios and plan for the distribution phase after retirement.

Until then, people should focus on accumulation, which takes time and effort.

“This is an economic planet,” Juge says. “There is power in time and compound interest."

During that accumulation phase, millennials and their Generation X counterparts won’t have enough investable assets to need financial advice.

“Everything they need is already online,” Juge says. “They don’t need to pay fees or commissions for a lecture on how things work. Roth IRA rules are online. They can access the investments online. If they want to have $1 million or more for retirement, all they need to do is put $150 a month in a mutual fund account and let it grow.”

However, depending on their career and their success level, financial advice might be appropriate for some younger Americans.

“Sure, at some point when they have amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars, young people might want to find an advisor,” Juge says. “For most young people, though, that money gets spent. They need a house. A new car. They get married. They have a family. They’re not holding onto enough non-retirement assets to justify the cost of advice.”