Those stories should scare you - again, that’s the new reality, not some fringe problem far far away. (Really, the crash of the steel and auto industries and first tech bubble collapse should have larn’t us… but we always think it won’t happen again/to us.)
Besides maxing out savings, focus some attention on your other spending. You might be surprised at how much you can divert useless expenditure into savings and investments. Just taking a wild shot - do you really need the maximum (financial) amount you can spend on a car, or cars, especially limited-use ones? Do you really need premium-tier cable at $100 a month? Designer bottled water and gourmet per-cup coffee?
Most people could probably trim 20% off their discretionary spending without more than a slight and passing pinch, once you’ve changed your mindset about how important it is to build a stable financial future at slight expense to your current lifestyle, instead of gambling your last decade or two against a household of pointless luxuries.
The weird thing is my parents are from the generation that had lifetime employment. My father was a (tenured) professor at the same university for about thirty years and my mother had thirty years at AT&T. I think my longest employment with the same company was about ten years. And I’m in my first job that offers a traditional pension plan, in addition to a 401(k).
A wise course, best implemented in your twenties - I waited until 40 (and got lucky with a job that lasted 20 years).
I experienced the “few want a software guy at 60” firsthand. Flies in the face of all the articles about how industry will have to rely on older workers because of a shortage of workers.
As I mentioned above, this happened at the bottom of the market - if not for an 18 month cash emergency fund that I stretched to more than two years, I would have had problems.
But this thread is about saving for retirement. It’s not about whether you can spend all your income on fancy toys. If it were I’d have a very different opinion.
I feel the same way as Dewey Finn. It scares me that my fortunes might change some day and I’ll be less employable than I am now. I live way below my means and have contingency plans in case things get fucked up and I need to save money.
But then I put my fears and anxieties aside and come up with the most reasonable multi-decade retirement plan that I can. Anything else seems silly and like living in fear instead of being rational about your own future.