Where is the retirement industry when you need it most?

The retirement industry and golden-years conversation are omnipresent in a person’s life — except in one critical moment.

Young earners in their first real jobs are exhorted by their employers, peers and industry messaging to start saving early. Kicking in $400 a month to a 401(k) that grows a conservative 6% a year yields more than $806,000 after 40 years — and that’s before the impact of employer matches. Accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, the mantra goes.

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Establishing emergency savings and “buckets” for things like a house down payment thwarts the need to dip into an account. Then once you’re actually retired, the industry shifts its focus to how to spend down the savings.

The one major life moment in which the retirement industry is less than helpful? When a person switches jobs.

The average worker today will change employers 9.9 times, according to one estimate, and can easily pile up 8 or more 401(k)s in the process.

It would be easier to have them all in one account, in part to make sure you’re not overly risky or too conservative in your allocations. But the industry doesn’t make rolling a plan into that of a new employer easy or obvious. And millions of savers — even high-earning ones — are cashing out their 401(k)s when leaving for a new gig. How can wealth advisors plug that “leakage”?

Read more: Cashing out 401(k) accounts: the new retirement crisis

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