Early champions of the most ubiquitous retirement plan in the US say it hasn't lived up to its promise - 5 financial advisers break down where it shines and fails

The 401(k) - perhaps the most ubiquitous but frequently underutilized retirement vehicle in the US - came under fire last week in a gloomy article from The Wall Street Journal, in which the very same people who championed the retirement plan decades ago now say that it hasn't served average Americans all that well.

Named after a tweak in the tax code back in 1978, the 401(k) came to life in an era when pensions offered and funded by private employers were the prominent form of retirement savings. For employers, pensions are expensive, and 401(k)s are comparatively cheap. Unsurprisingly, pensions declined precipitously in the decades since as businesses instead embraced the thriftier 401(k), which primarily depends on employees funding it with their pretax salaries.

But the 401(k) was never designed as a replacement for the pension, and, according to the WSJ story, some of the influential "human-resources executives, consultants, economists and policy experts" who initially blew air into the 401(k)'s sails for its potential to encourage saving now bemoan America's reliance on it. The investment gains they projected proved too optimistic, and high plan fees combined with significant market drops in the 2000s have left many 401(k) adopters behind on their savings goals.

Americans do have a saving problem. More than half of US households are in danger of not having enough money to live on in retirement. And 47% of the country wouldn't have the money to pay for an unexpected $400 expense, according to the Federal Reserve.

But the 401(k) isn't the problem, according to a handful of financial advisers all interviewed by Business Insider - none of whom work for companies that sell 401(k) plans and all of whom are bound by the fiduciary duty to act in their clients' best interests. They acknowledged the savings plan isn't perfect, but they largely defended its utility for helping people achieve a comfortable retirement.

Here are their thoughts on the 401(k), nearly 40 years after its creation: