Sometimes people lead you to believe that there is a net. It is tough to fight that.
That is the situation I was in. when I started with Megacorp, they offered such a good pension deal that, in my early 20s, the last thing I was thinking about was retirement. It was all taken care of, and along with SS no worries. Back then little was being discussed about SS not being enough to retire on. And while there were a few warnings about it running out of money... that was going to be 70+ years in the future. Don't worry, be happy. Besides, Megacorp practically promised me that as long as I did not do anything illegal or unethical, I would never lose my job.
When 401ks came along, my initial view was "I don't need to worry about this". Goodness, give up some of my salary to get money that I could not touch for 35 years? I have "better things" to do, I am married, we want to start a family, get a bigger house, get "better" things... we "need" the money now. I was not a spendthrift, I knew about having 3-6 months put away for emergencies, but I did not need anything beyond that.
I was SO fortunate that a couple of older, wiser co-workers harassed me daily about opening up a 401K for close to a year before I did. They showed me calculations, said I could better budget, said you cannot assume Megacorp pension will be as it is... and it still took close to a year for them to get through to me.
In sum, I had to be convinced to take a long term view. And it was challenged when I hit my first "bad" market experience on Black Monday of October 1987. I was tempted to take the short term view, as were a lot of my co-workers, and listen to the "boasts" of those who claimed being in the market was too dangerous. But... I listened and read up on all angles. And DW and I concluded that, really, we had been fine without touching the 401k money, let us just leave it alone. And maybe, as a vote of confidence, saving more and increase putting money into it. And then I started reading more about investing for the long term...
Perhaps what happens to some is that they assume "why worry about the long term, there is/will be a safety net". Others can make lead you into that belief. It was not until the mid-1990s, after surviving Megacorp's first major purge as well as changes to that "nice" pension plan that I fully realized that I had to take full responsibility for any future in retirement. I was not thinking FIRE, but started more thinking "the only safety net I have is the one I try to build myself".
Nicely said. I was like most people back in the 80s and didn’t think much of 401ks. I didn’t have any older, wiser employees harass me about opening one, and so got a late start on saving (like most people our age, I suppose). The only good thing about that was once I realized how late I was in getting started saving for retirement, I began putting away the maximum I could every year.