Why Millennials Might Not See Much Of The $30 Trillion Wealth Transfer

Boomers, on the other hand, inherited this wealth and did not feel the same financial vulnerability, and each successive generation since the Great Depression has enjoyed more affluence and has been less sensitive to the possibility of economy collapse.

Advances in health care are also likely to erode the wealth currently held by baby boomers.

“The average cost of health care in retirement is around $386,000,” said Garcia. “That’s only going to increase as life expectancy increases.”

Klososky and Garcia also outlined several other generational trends impacting the financial industry.

One that is often discussed, the tendency among millennials to achieve the hallmarks of early adulthood at later ages, has serious implications for financial planners. Young people are waiting longer to start careers, buy homes, marry and have children.

“When that happens, the birth generations spread out,” said Klososky. “Instead of generations being 20 years apart, they’re now 24 years or 27 years apart.”

At the same time, technological change is accelerating—so the impacts on the early years of a generation, like on millennials born in the early 1980s, might be very different from the impacts on those born later in a generation, millennials born in the mid-1990s. For successive generations, the differences will become sharper.

Take, for instance, the generation following millennials, dubbed Generation Z. Early Generation Z was born in the late 1990s when basic cellular phones and pagers were still at the pinnacle of consumer mobile technology. Late Generation Z was born in the middle years of the current decade, when smartphones and tablet computers had already proliferated.

Extended life expectancy will also change how financial planners think about serving their clients, said Garcia.

“Longevity is increasing for three reasons: advances in health care, advances in technology and advances in wealth,” he said. “All of those things will lead to better health and longer life spans … people will pickle themselves if they can and live forever.”