And those financial advisor mistakes are a lot like their clients' errors. That is, the wealthy do not save. Doesn't surprise me. We've noticed that even high-end financial advisors don't heed their own advice. FAs, like their clients,
create unsustainable life styles.
Robert Frank, who covers the wealthy for the Wall Street Journal, says today in his Wealth Report blog (subscription required): "According to data from Moody’s Analytics, the top earning 5% of Americans now account for 36% of consumer outlays. More incredible, this group (with an average income of $342,000 in 2008) have the lowest savings rate in the country: 1.4% compared with more than 8% for the rest of the population. That means that people earning more than $300,000 a year save less than one fifth as much as the bottom 40% of earners."
As the Peter G. Peterson Foundation notes, as recently as the early 1980s, Americans saved about 10 percent of their disposable income. (See table here.)