Stuart Duncan, a 57-year-old maintenance splicer for the phone company, intended to retire in two years. Now, with the stock market taking a sustained nose dive, he’s not so sure.

His 401(k) retirement plan has taken a $31,000 hit, Duncan said Friday morning while having coffee with friends at Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Company in downtown Napa.

“I’m still considering retiring in two years. I don’t want to be controlled by the stock market,” he said defiantly.

Unlike a lot of people, Duncan said he could marry his shrunken 401(k) with Social Security and a pension and maybe do just fine. Then again, maybe not.

“This may be denial on my part,” he said. Who knows what the future will bring?

The apparent unraveling of the nation’s and world’s financial systems was Topic A at the coffee house. By the end of the day Friday, Wall Street would record its worst week in history. Stocks were down 18 percent for the week, 40 percent for the year.

Leo Kozlowski, a retired 62-year-old firefighter, admitted suffering “huge losses” in his retirement investments.

Three months ago, he was “completely confident” about the country’s and his own economic future, Kozlowski said. No longer. “I don’t even know what I have in money market is safe,” he said.

Kozlowski now finds himself looking for little ways to economize. If millions of people pull back on their personal spending as he is, this could mean further bad news for the economy, he said.

Ken Boyd, 54, said he empathized with people in retirement or approaching retirement. Their nest eggs may never recover.

“If you’re 65, you’re in trouble,” Boyd said. “It will take a long time for the market to come back.”

“Me, personally, I’m just hanging in there. I’m not touching a thing. The really smart people are buying today. They have balls of brass,” he said.

Angela Zack said she gets worried phone calls from her retired dad. “He’s panicked,” she said. With the stock market’s big decline, his 401(k) is more like a “201(k),” she said.

Because the economic news is so dire, Morgan Grossman said she was happy to have stopped reading newspapers and watching TV a year ago. “I live in tranquility. If you don’t know about it, it doesn’t bother you,” she said.

America may emerge a different place when the economy puts itself back together, Grossman said. “Our children in 20 years will look around at all these big houses and they won’t remember what built them,” she said. This decade’s housing bubble will be part of history, she said.

Ron Smarker, 63, predicted the economy would turn around in two or three years, making it safe for him to retire. “As Roosevelt said, ‘All we have to fear is fear itself,’” he said.

It’s times like these that people, distraught at seeing their retirement accounts melt away, turn to their financial advisors.

“For some people it’s absolutely terrifying. It’s paralyzing. They don’t know where to turn,” said Chal Daniels, owner of Harvest Financial in Napa.

Many retirees, such as  those relying on Social Security and a small amount of savings, were just getting by before this financial crisis, Daniels said. Now “they’re in a very definite pickle.”

Many will have to cut back on spending, shrink gifts to their children, consider reverse mortgages, he said.

Those prudent people who began financial planning early in life are likely to weather the storm, he said. Their retirement funds should be ample and diversified enough, he said.

For people in the 60 to 75 age group, “this is a huge, huge disaster,” said Mel Varrelman of Mel Varrelman Financial Services of St. Helena. “My heart is absolutely bleeding for people in that age bracket. It’s horrible to watch.”

“I believe the market will come back, but it will go through some real dicey stuff,” Varrelman said. In the meantime, the lives of millions of retirees and near-retirees will be disrupted, he said.

“The people who will survive the best are the ones broadly diversified with stocks, bonds and fixed income securities,” Varrelman said. “The old adage, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is a good one,” he said.

As long as a year ago, Lee O’Dwyer of K&A Asset Management said he was advising clients to shrink their exposure to stocks. Even so, the dimension of the recent stock collapse is astonishing, he said. “There has not been a place to hide in this bear market,” he said.

“A lot of people keep saying to me, things will be more stable after the election,” said Jim Riley, investment manager at Napa Wealth Management in Napa. “I really don’t know.”

These are historic times, Riley said. “I’m 55 years old. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sensing that the market was ripe for a fall, Riley said he began advising clients to lighten their stock load a year ago. Now that the market has plunged, this may be a time to buy stocks at bargain prices, he said.