The shift in this area has been toward providing more, not less, health-care advice. Only 16% of advisors provided extensive health-care counseling in their advice three years ago.

Advisors, meanwhile, are not quite as optimistic about their clients’ prospects of meeting their retirement goals as the clients seem to be, and percentages have not shifted much over the last three years.

According to the 2018 survey, only 10% of advisors said that 90% or more of their clients between 50 and 65 are on track to reach retirement goals. An almost equal number (11%) had fewer than 40% of clients on track. The rest are somewhere in the middle. In 2015, 10% of advisors had their clients in the top range and slightly more than 11% were at the bottom, so at least the bottom is improving.

“Clients are wiser about their investments now than they were in the past,” explains Erik Daniels, executive vice president with Ronald Blue Trust in Atlanta, where more than 70% of clients could retire early if they desired. “From my perspective, I think the 2007-2008 financial crisis still weighs heavily on people’s thinking. They are more wary than they were in the past.”.

Some of that same wariness may be affecting advisors, according to the survey. Over the last three years, more advisors have shifted away from making annual adjustments to withdrawal rates and more are setting withdrawals below the traditional 4% level.

Only 26.6% of advisors adjust clients’ portfolios every year now while 33.8% did in 2015. Twenty-eight percent now set initial withdrawal rates at between 3% and 4% while 25.4% did three years ago. But 33.5% of advisors still have drawdowns set between 4% and 5% of portfolio values now, an increase from 30% in 2015.

Alan Myers, president of Aerie Capital Management in Baltimore, is one of the advisors who sets a slightly higher withdrawal rate for his retiree clients at 4% to 4.5%. “The lessons of the financial crisis about the need to save seem to have sunk in, and most of my clients’ minds are at ease. They are not stressing about the volatile market. Whether the savings rates will continue into the future remains to be seen,” he says. “Despite the fact that we have seen phenomenal market performance in the last few years, I have not seen any of my clients doing anything stupid with their money. Again, I think that is a function of the financial crisis.”

Myers is one of the advisors who adjusts clients’ portfolios at times. “If they are spending sustainably, we usually do not adjust downward. For some, because of the good market performance, we have adjusted upward.”

Most of the advisors reported a majority of their retired clients are spending their funds in a way that will be sustainable for years to come. More than three-quarters (77.6%) have at least 60% or more of their clients spending sustainably and 20% have 90% or more of their clients on the right track to make it through retirement.

But even some high-net-worth clients are a little nervous, according to Daniel P. Lash, a partner and advisor at VLP Financial Advisors in Vienna, Va., whose clients have $100,000 and up in annual income and at least $500,000 in investable assets.