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.