In the world of retirement advising, it's common knowledge that different age groups should receive different advice. Younger clients, who have plenty of time to reap the stock market's long-term gains, are typically encouraged to invest aggressively, while clients closer to retirement are urged to play it safe.
But it's not just the advice that differs; it's also the way that advice needs to be delivered. Research — and financial advisors' own personal experiences — shows that clients of different generations prefer to be advised in different ways.
"Why someone wants to invest is going to be different for each generation," said Nicole Cope, senior director of
Part of this is a matter of technology. A baby boomer — born between 1946 and 1964, by the
"The overarching thing I would say is, understand the needs of the client," said Nathan Voris, head of Channel Strategy at
But it's not just about the tech either. Clients of different ages grew up at different times and were formed by different experiences.
Baby boomers came of age during the Cold War. Generation X — born between 1965 and 1980 — grew up during the malaise of the 1970s. Millennials — born 1981 to 1996 — were shocked awake by 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Great Recession. And Generation Z has known almost nothing but instability: the COVID pandemic, the volatile presidency of Donald Trump and two "once-in-a-lifetime" recessions.
Considering all this, it's no wonder these age groups developed different attitudes about finance.
"There have been some pivotal moments for each one of those generations," Cope said. "For instance, 2008 impacted the boomers, X and millennials all in very different ways … I think it formed and shaped a lot of opinions about the long-term sustainability of a career, of investing, of homeownership."
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The result is four very different sets of clients — and they all need to retire someday. How can financial advisors get them there? To find out, Financial Planning asked some of the country's top wealth management experts for their tips, warnings and insights. Taken together, they offer a roadmap to retirement advising across all generations.
Generation Z
The most important thing to know about Gen Z clients is that they're digital natives. Having grown up in the smartphone era, these young investors are extremely comfortable gathering financial advice and information online — which can be both a benefit and a hazard.
On the plus side, Generation Z is highly adept at using apps to keep an eye on their portfolios.
"Many Gen Zers, myself included, prefer to check our investments via an app on our phones," said Bri Conn, an investment advisor representative at
Another benefit is Gen Z's voracious intake of financial knowledge they find online.
"They are super informed because they are consumers of information," Voris said. "It's the ability to consume and parse data and information quickly and seek out sources of information that's part of the day-to-day life of Gen Z folks."
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But this ease with technology also has its dangers. For one thing, younger investors tend to be more
Thirty-five percent of Gen Zers turn to TikTok for investing advice, according to the personal finance company
The challenge for financial advisors is to respect the knowledge many Gen Z clients bring to the table, but also to clearly and definitively call out misinformation.
"I think an advisor needs to have that conversation around where they're getting their information from," Cope said. "Does that actually fit their particular situation? It's hard to give very personalized advice in a 2-minute clip."
But there's also another way technology has influenced Gen Zers: From the beginning of their working lives, many of them have benefited from automatic features in their retirement plans. Auto-enrollment has signed them up for their 401(k)s, and auto-escalation is increasing their contributions as their salaries rise.
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"If they work for an employer who's automatically enrolling them, they're in at the age of 21 or 23 or 25 — and saving," said Anne Lester, former head of retirement solutions at JPMorgan Asset Management and author of the upcoming book "
As a result, Generation Z is already
"Someday they're going to have a lot of money," Lester said. "It's early days, but so far they're doing better than everybody else."
Millennials
Millennials have a lot in common with Gen Z, including their affinity for technology and vulnerability to misinformation. What sets them apart, many experts say, is their anxiety.
"I think that millennials have had more financial trauma that was not preceded by happy years," Lester said. "I think that has made them much more skeptical about the 'Don't worry, it'll work out, just trust that the markets do their thing' [type of advice]."
One source of that anxiety is debt. Millennials account for 47% of the country's outstanding student loan debt, according to the personal finance researcher
And that's just one of many worries. Many millennials started their working lives during the Great Recession and the long, anemic recovery that followed it, which hobbled their upward mobility. The unemployment, depressed wages and lost productivity from that experience cost millennials about $21.4 billion in earnings, according to the nonprofit researcher
About two decades later, skyrocketing prices and interest rates are blocking many millennials from another pathway to wealth: owning a home. From 2013 to 2023, the average price of a house in the U.S. jumped by 58%, according to
"They may feel they're priced out of so many parts of what creates and generates wealth for most people," Cope said. "They're entering their prime earning years, and they feel so far behind."
The bottom line is millennials have a lot on their minds besides saving for retirement. The way to help, Voris said, is not by forcing them to change their focus, but by providing advice on "the basics": budgeting, saving and debt management.
"Make sure that you are serving the whole individual," Voris said. "That whole component of advice and planning that isn't about your portfolio can be super important."
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Like Gen Zers, Cope said, millennials also have a tendency — perhaps due to their immersion in social media — to need a certain amount of "instant gratification." But that doesn't mean it's helpful to give lectures about expensive snacks.
"You hear people talk about the coffee and the avocado toast — stop that!" Cope said. "They need to have some outlet for that. So how do you balance the need for instant gratification with keeping them on the path for longer-term success?"
Most important of all, Lester said, advisors need to listen.
"Be respectful of their experiences. Listen more than you talk. Ask open-ended questions," she said. "Because of the particular environment that they've been living through … I just think they're a lot less likely to believe that it'll work out."
Generation X
In so many ways, Generation X is caught in the middle: between baby boomers and millennials, between pensions and 401(k)s, between supporting their kids and taking care of their parents. And to make matters worse, it often feels like no one pays attention to them.
"Nobody cares about them," Lester said. "I think if you were to stop and ask them to reflect on how they feel seen or treated by the media … I think they're totally overlooked."
In terms of retirement savings, Generation X came of age at a particularly inconvenient time. In the 1980s, American employers
"There were none of the automating features of today's 401(k) industry," Lester said. "People didn't always know to sign themselves up, and yet they were kind of left to figure it all out by themselves."
Recent research bears this out.
But if a financial advisor can alert them, it's never too late to opt in.
"Maybe add an additional layer of communication to let folks who aren't being defaulted or updated know that these features exist," Voris said. "Then they can take advantage of them, [at least] at a lesser rate than folks that have been defaulted."
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As for technology, Gen Xers came of age at another transitional moment, just as the internet age was beginning. As a result, their preferences regarding virtual and in-person communication tend to be all over the map. Sometimes a client will be content to receive an email; other times they'll want to come into the office for a meeting.
"It's sort of that bridge generation that has experienced both types of service," Voris said. "As an advisor, you want to make sure that you can do both."
But perhaps the most difficult way in which Xers are caught in the middle is in their families. Many Gen X Americans belong to the "
"They're caring for the health or financial obligations of their parents," Cope said, "and then they also are faced with either boomerang children coming back in the nest or … they're still trying to get kids through college. So that big financial impact of nearing retirement and trying to get kids through schooling — it's a lot."
Jeff Burke, the founder of
"Clients only have a certain amount of money to devote to their financial goals, and right now Gen X is probably juggling more big-dollar goals than other generations," Burke said. "Helping clients understand how they are tracking toward their various goals can help prioritize where funds should be directed."
Baby boomers
The first thing to know about baby boomers is they have the most money. According to the
In the most obvious way, this is an enormous advantage for boomer clients. But it also means they have the most to lose — and it makes them anxious.
"They are either in or nearing retirement," Cope said. "So there may be those heightened emotions around volatility in the markets, because they feel they cannot bear out a longer market cycle."
In 2024, even the youngest baby boomers are in their 60s. Naturally, clients this close to retirement are sensitive to market volatility — which means the 2020s have been a tough time for them. In 2022, the U.S. stock market suffered its
The best way to help these clients, Cope said, is to help them avoid those risks in their investments.
"It's much more important for them to be in products and portfolios that mitigate their knee-jerk reaction to volatility," Cope said.
Fortunately, according to some experts, baby boomers have another advantage: They listen.
"With boomers and the Silent Generation, I think they tend to listen to and defer to authority figures much more easily," Lester said. "So if you're perceived to be — or were hired because you are — an expert or an authority figure, that's likely to be a very powerful element of your relationship with your client."
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As for the best modes of communication, Lester, Cope and Voris agreed: Boomers are the most likely of all the generations to prefer an in-person meeting — but that doesn't mean they're inflexible about it.
"I think the best practice is to meet someone where they are," Voris said. "There are certainly boomers that can have an all-digital experience. There are others that are going to want to be in the office once a year. And there are many people that are somewhere in between."
Some boomers are even comfortable making tweaks to their portfolios online, Voris said, in much the same way as Generation Z. The important thing is that, if need be, they can talk to the human being behind the apps.
"Knowing that there's an advisor there is a huge stress reliever for many," Voris said. "Knowing that they're there in times of turmoil and times of market volatility — that is, I think, important to a lot of people, boomers but also everyone."
That, in a nutshell, is the job of retirement advisors: to provide not only guidance but comfort, so investors can make the rational decisions needed to reach their goals.
"There's one commonality amongst all of these generations," Cope said. "It's really about the advisor helping mitigate the level of emotions that are being brought forward to these conversations."
