Gifted article in the NYT:

Was the 401(k) a Mistake?
How an obscure, 45-year old tax change transformed retirement and left so many Americans out in the cold.
nytimes.com - Retirement crisis

Forbus [age 50] figures that she can retire comfortably on around $1 million, although if her house is paid off, she might be able to get by with a bit less. She is not factoring Social Security benefits into her calculations. “I feel like it’s too uncertain and not something I can depend on,” she says.

Per the previous thread, that's a mistake. She'll get at least 80%, probably 100% of her SS benefits.

She also knows that markets don’t always go up. During the 2008 global financial crisis, her 401(k) lost a third of its value, which was a scarring experience. From the extensive research that she has done, Forbus has become a fairly savvy investor; she’s familiar with all of the major funds and has 60 percent of her money in stocks and the rest in fixed income, which is generally the recommended ratio for people who are some years away from retiring. Still, Forbus would prefer that her retirement prospects weren’t so dependent on her own investing acumen. “It makes me very nervous,” she concedes. She and her friends speak with envy of the pensions that their parents and grandparents had. “I wish that were an option for us,” she says.

As long as she didn't sell in 2008/2009 she didn't lose anything, of course, and if she kept contributing she got to buy cheap. She should be praying for another 50% stock market drop.

Volatility is the "fee" we pay for those sweet stock market returns. Preaching to the choir here, I know. How to educate people on this? I've tried to educate family members...it has NOT gone well. No matter how many charts I show some people can't get past the volatility, and "the market is a casino" idea.

So my mistake was not contributing to an employer 401k in the early days (uncertainty around getting the money as a non-citizen then) and using a SEP-IRA instead of a solo 401k (solo 401k allows more money to be socked away at a lower income level, handy during the lean times).