Divorce and becoming a single parent at age 32 woke me up. That is about the time I really started...but even with that...I was not able to really save the larger buckets until the salary went way up. High salaries for those of us without pensions or defined benefit plans....seem to be key. Without it...I doubt I'd be where I am now. I started educating our children early on about saving for retirement as I am sure others here have done.
I was fortunate in that I didn't trust employers or the government to take care of my retirement even before I was 25 -- this all the way back into the 1980s. Even then, I thought demographics were going to put the hammer down on those of us at the tail end of the baby boom. I put 12% or more of my pay into my 401K every pay period, even when it really hurt and all my friends were "living it up" more, and eventually started earning enough to max it and two Roth IRAs for my wife and me which we've dutifully done for many years now. It was only because I learned the discipline so early, IMO, that we have a chance to retire early without employer-provided health insurance and only a puny (frozen) pension.
Had I not done these things, had I not adopted the cynical Generation X mentality about employers and government taking care of me in old age, once they took retiree health insurance away and froze my pension in my early 30s, I might be working until I'm dead. But as it is, even if they water down or means test my SS and with my tiny frozen pension, I should be able to get out by 55, maybe earlier -- and almost all of this was from adopting a LBYM attitude and saving for retirement until it hurt, even in my 20s. People in my situation who trusted the institutions to deliver on the promises we were given when we started working -- and thus didn't bother saving -- may never retire. That's the new reality, and younger folks don't have to like it (and we shouldn't) -- but it is what it is and we can either stay down and accept defeat or get off the mat and redouble our determination to beat the worsening odds.
And I would suggest that any younger person who doesn't want to work until they die or become disabled assume *zero* from your employer pensions, health insurance and SS**. Yes, even those of you who have public sector pensions planned; if they can be taken away from the private sector as most have been, they can be yanked from the public as well. Yes, you may get something and I hope you do, but the less you *assume* you'll get while you're young, the more likely you will still be to retire even if these things are taken from you -- and if they aren't taken away, it's just gravy.
** -- note: I'm not making a political statement about thinking I'll get no SS. But for planning purposes I err on the side of being conservative, and that means saving enough that I can still retire even if I, my generation or future generations get the considerably worse deal I think we will see.