It appears that middle-class Americans would be grateful to have affordable, professional and ethical advice for managing their retirement accounts.
The average American has no access to quality, non-biased financial advisers. The 99% can find one who will be quick to sell you a fee-heavy mutual fund, annuity or life insurance policy, but what about the advisers who don't receive commissions? Fee-only advisers can't make a living on small accounts, so many won't even talk to you over the phone unless you have $100,000 or more to invest.
Average, working Americans need help with their investments. Recently, I spent some time with family members and some of their friends. After I told them what I did and offered to look at one person's 401k, it turned into looking at and adjusting seven people's retirement accounts.
They were in fee-heavy actively managed funds when they should have been predominantly in low-fee index funds. Their 401k's were bleeding money away in fees not because they chose to do it that way but because it was one of the prebuilt options that their employers recommended.
As of the time of this writing, 81% of Americans are worried that they won't have enough money for retirement, 78% of middle-class Americans don't have a financial adviser, 88% report little or no investment knowledge and 82% claim that they have little or no confidence in their ability to pick the right mutual funds for their 401k.
If that doesn't sound like a whole lot of people who desperately need the help of stand-up, ethical financial advisers, I don't know what does.
63% said that having an unbiased professional to help them with their 401k would be extremely or highly beneficial, and another 23% said it would be moderately beneficial.
About one in four people are postponing retirement because they don't have enough savings. We as advisers can't let this happen. People work hard and sacrifice time with their family throughout their working lives. They should be able to make up for that time once they retire.
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