It’s the job of the fiduciary to always act in the best interest of the client – even ifthe client doesn’t know his own best interest. In the purist sense,the role model is the classic turn of the (nineteenth) century banktrust officer.

This stereotypically stodgy curmudgeon often acts as thesurrogate parent to the beneficiary. The trustee poses as a barrierbetween wanton spending and financial discipline.

Related: A new 401(k) paradigm?

While all this makes a great Victorian novel, we can relaxknowing this kind of paternalism all but disappeared with theentrepreneurial eighties. People today do a much better job lookingout for themselves. What’s more, individualism rocks. Folks don’twant an alma pater looking over their shoulder. They seek thefreedom of self-reliant independence.

Related: To achieve success, retirement savers must'Know Thyself'

Alas, human nature being what it is, it’s tough for anyone tostay the financial course. That’s where the modern fiduciary comesin.

We can isolate several specific life periods where making theright decision can have a dramatic impact. In terms of retirement, almost everyone agrees on at leasttwo such periods – the beginning of the career and the end of thecareer.

One’s retirement life can be quite comfortable if one makes theright decision to save massive quantities at the beginning of one’scareer. But there’s no reason to believe you’ve missed the boat ifyou missed the opportunity of this first period.

As we near retirement, we actually enter into a second periodwhere decision-making can offer a dramatic impact (see, “Fiduciary Advice: 5 Critical Behaviors to STOPWithin 5 Years of Retirement,” FiduciaryNews.com,October 4, 2016).

This is where fiduciaries must do their best impersonation ofthose old-time bankers. The last few working years represent thebest chance to best prepare for retirement. But remember,retirement is a significant lifestyle change, and the inherentuncertainty can scare people.

How do you react when you’re scared? Some people circle thewagons and fight with a steely glint in their eye. But those peopleare about as rare as a lonesome cowboy. Many more people undertakea form of psychic numbing, thinking if they ignore the problem, itwill just go away.

Do you doubt this? Log into your memory banks and program theWay-Back Machine to 2008-2009. Can you recall how many employeestossed their unopened 401(k) statements into the “ignore forever”pile. (OK, so it could have been worse. They could have openedthose statements and sold at the market bottom, but that’s not thepoint.)

Behavioral science says people would rather live in the presentthan sacrifice for the future. Is that in their best interest?

Humanities majors might consider this a philosophical question,but those versed in finance know the undeniable truth of compoundinterest.

That means thinking several moves ahead. That means forging –not squandering – today’s resources into a happy tomorrow.

In these two periods of life – the beginning of the career andthe end of the career – the temptation is to, in the first case,buy the things you could only dream of when you were a kid. In thelatter case, the comfort of a lifetime of accumulation makes it allthe more difficult to contemplate the vastly different lifestyle ofretirement.

But if you ignore this for too long, well, that’s when mistakesare made.

Retirement comes in a variety of flavors. While we all can’thave the perfect retirement, there exists an optimal retirement foreveryone. It’s reaching for the perfect that causes people to loseout on the very acceptable optimal.

It’s up to the fiduciary to identify the losing choices and helpguide the retirement saver towards making the hard choices thatwill benefit them in the future.