My mantra has always been spend your time and effort trying to make more money, not saving it. If you have a decent head on your shoulders, and a good family to fall back on, then investing in creating your network in a city or company with other aspiring people is going to win out many times over versus concerning yourself with saving.

Yeah, but maxing out your 401K contribution for the first 20 years of your career is much more productive than doing it the last 20 years. If it were not for the withdrawal penalty, I could retire now at 46 and live off the interest alone. If I keep slugging away another 20 years, I’ll have several $M.

You need to save when you are young to take advantage of compounding interest. Don’t get caught up in the rat race.

401(k)s don't provide the level of security I want. Given the history that I've learned and the current state of demographics and financials around the USA/world, I think inflation is the only way out, until it can no longer be sustained and then revolution. Simply because so much of society is invested in the "market", I believe the government has no choice but to keep bailing it out, but I figure that only helps you keep up with inflation.

My ideal is to directly have ownership in businesses with strong cash flow, good real estate value, citizenship and property in another country or two, and most importantly, to have the human capital of knowing the right people in government/medicine/law/etc to be able to lean on the right people when I need them.

I'm lucky enough to have a stable family so that I can afford to take risks to try to make the above happen (some of which I have made significant progress in), but I definitely don't plan on depending on my 401(k) other than as a worst case scenario.

This.

Not to mention, after saving similar (or more) you'll own a home 5x in value.