$2 trillion wiped out of retirement funds

— -- The financial meltdown has demolished Americans' retirement savings, wiping out $2 trillion — or about 20% of value — in the past 15 months, Congress' top budget analyst said Tuesday.

This estimate probably comes as no surprise to millions of Americans who have reviewed their 401(k) statements in recent weeks.

"This is a financial panic right now, and one reason it feels so bad is that everything is going down," says Kurt Brouwer, a financial planner in San Francisco.

The sharp drop in savings has led Americans to postpone contributing and, in some cases, delay retirement, Peter Orszag, head of the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Education and Labor Committee.

A new study by the AARP found that one in five workers 45 and older have stopped putting money into a 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings account during the past year.

Financial planners say discontinuing 401(k) contributions is exactly the wrong thing to do in this environment. Workers who continue to contribute to their 401(k) plans are buying stocks at bargain prices, and that will pay off in the long run, says Greg Womack, a financial planner in Edmond, Okla. "Unless we go through a total market failure and government meltdown, 15 to 20 years from now, they're going to be sitting just fine."

Planners acknowledge that the bear market has been particularly hard on savers who are nearing retirement. But even those investors will probably need to make their savings last an additional 25 to 30 years, which means part of their savings should be in stocks, says Mark Bass, a financial planner in Lubbock, Texas.

Workers who ditch their stock funds and move their money to low-risk investments also are making a mistake, Bass says. Those investors will lock in their losses and could miss out on big gains when the market turns around, he says. "Emotionally, it makes sense," Bass says, "but financially, it makes no sense."

Contributing: Associated Press