When I was a young person, I did not count on every seeing a nickel from social security. Thus, for many years the focus on saving for retirement was a bit more critical.
I also did not trust that the mega-corp retirement pension would still exist by the time I got to be that age. Yet, I did take it into consideration when I made the decision to stick with mega-corp rather than jump ship to a different company that had no pension plan.
Now, I am fortunate enough (perhaps some would say 'Lucky', but that is a whole separate thread...) that I have the old fashioned three legged stool. Pension, Social Security, and Savings.
I still remember the conversation where my boss explained to the group how not taking the base amount that the company matched on the 401k was just plain stupid. That convinced me to sign up. I had not signed up the first few years for several reasons:
1. The initial plan was a company stock purchase plan. During the period of time that I had been with the company the stock went into free fall, and basically taught people that the market was a good place to lose your money. It was hard to sign up to voluntarily put money into a 401k, when the past 5 years was a big loser on our stock experience.
2. We were living check to check, raising kids, going from two income to one income, etc. It took a bit to pony up the cash for the 401k.
After we were in it for awhile, the market hung in there and we could start to see that not only were we benefiting from market gains, but also from the company match. After some experience where you could start to see the compounding, it was obviously a no-brainer.
My own kids- one started out gung ho on saving large amounts in his 401k. Convinced that he was going to sock it away and be able to retire early. Within the first year or two the market took a big old hit, and all he saw was that his account balance was significantly less than what he had put into it. It is still a struggle for him to see value in investing. Plus, the companies that he has worked for do not have any match. Much harder to see why this is the right thing to do when you get burned early.
