I've been reading a book about saving/investing/retirement and one point keeps springing back to mind: the true potential of saving money comes over time. After college graduation, I worked full-time for eight years without putting anything away for retirement. Then I started that process, and four years later I've got $20,000 in my retirement plan (and at least 18 more years until retirement.) I'm in pretty good shape, but I'd be in much better shape if I'd started socking away money eight years earlier than I did.
That eight years I missed out on will probably mean the difference between me retiring comfortably versus me retiring as a millionaire.
If you're reading this and you haven't yet graduated from college, my advice to you is to get the retirement-savings ball rolling as soon as you enter the workforce. Don't delay. Thanks to the miracle of compounding interest, your savings will snowball in later years...and the later years will come earlier if you start sooner.