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hey red barron, I was exactly in your spot 17 years ago as a starting engineer. I have contributed max gov allowance to 401 since day one, and many years that is all I did. Still that has been enough to put me on track for retirement at a relatively early age (it helps that my company has good matching).

It wasnt until my mid 30s that I became a bit educated about roth IRAs. Since then I have contributed to mine (and wife's) most years. I think if you have extra income a Roth is a great place to start. If you can start building your roth account on top of your 401k you will be in great shape. I personally don't mess with individual stocks at all these days. I stick to index ETFs, industry ETFs, and to a lesser extent target date etfs.

My last non expert piece of advice is related to incentives and bonuses. You will probably find yourself getting decent sized single payout bonuses at some point. It is easy and fun to think of these as a good time to buy a new car or some other luxury. My policy with these has always been to spend say 5 to 10% of bonuses on something fun, but save or invest the remainder. This has probably been the best move I have made. If you can live on your base pay anyways, just treat any bonus pay as a gift to your retirement.