Saving for the future

So, here I am, 33 years old and thinking about retirement. You might think I'm too young to be thinking about retirement, and you couldn't be more wrong. Everyone, no matter how young should be working towards a comfortable retirement. ING has this cool tool that lets you enter a bit of information and compare your retirement savings against other people based on your age, gender, income, etc. So, I put in my information and come back with just over 1,000 people like me who filled out the form, and compared to them, I'm doing great. On average, people like me have barely socked away $10k for retirement, and I'm over double that amount.
To be honest, all the money I have set aside for retirement has been within the past year. The first, best, most important thing you can do to save for your retirement is start early. If I had started saving for retirement when I was first offered a 401(k) I would have so much more money waiting for me. A great article I found at Clark Howard's site compares what it takes to retire a millionaire. The later you start, the more you have to save every month to make up for it. If you save $2000 a year (that's only $167 a month) for 7 years starting at age 15, you will have over $1 million by the time you reach 65. If you keep saving for the full 50 years starting at 15, you will have over $2 million!
According to the site I need to save between $5,000 and $10,000 a year to be a millionaire when I want to retire. How in the world will I do that? Well, I haven't completely figured that out yet, but to start, if your company has a 401(k), use it! Max that sucker out as much as you can for your employer match (if there is one). I had the opportunity to do that many years ago when I was much younger and stupid with money. I chose not to contribute and in doing so wasted free money. If your employer offers a match on funds invested, even if it's only 50% match of up to 6% base salary, and you don't take full advantage of it, you're basically saying No to a raise of 3%!
Beyond your employer's 401(k) you have other investment options. Some are more complicated than others, and some require more money to start. Clark's site has a good list of investment options broken down by how much money you need to get started.
I chose to start a Roth IRA. I knew for a while that was what I wanted to do for my personal retirement account, the tax benefits are better than other investment options, and I liked the fact that I'd be using post-tax dollars to invest. I chose the Vanguard STAR because from the research I did, it appeared to do well historically, and I had heard good things about the fund.
The problem was, I didn't have $1,000 to start the fund, and I felt overwhelmed trying to save up that much money. It actually took me a couple years to finally start the fund after I had decided I was going to. Eventually, I ended up taking the money from my tax returns one year and used those to begin. I could have chosen a fund that required less money to start, but I felt that the Vanguard STAR was the best choice for me.
After getting the fund started, the rest was easy, I have the fund automatically taking money out every paycheck, and can simply increase that over time until I reach the maximum amount of money I can invest per year.
Everyone has to make their own decisions when it comes to retirement, but I urge anyone who isn't doing anything about it to start right away. The sooner you start saving, the more money you'll have!