We'd bought our house in 1995, and our area experienced no boom, no bust, so that part was a non-event for us. We been paying the mortgage down aggressively (ugly 9.75% rate), so we were nearly done at that point.
DH had a 401k at a former employer, all invested in retirement date funds, which we watched tank. Just left them alone and waited for them to recover. His 401k at his then current employer was switching investment options, and somehow my choice was misinterpreted - instead of changing his new contributions to a bond fund, they moved all his funds to that fund. At first I was livid, and was set to move things myself, but the timing was providential - his balance only took a little hit, mostly the unintended move to bonds preserved his total. Watching things continue to drop, I opted to leave the big chunk in bonds and put all new contributions in an S & P 500 index. It was an experiment. The bonds essentially stayed at $24k, while the new contributions climbed with time. Before this, I didn't really know about indexing, I was frustrated trying to pick funds by looking at past returns. I knew it didn't make sense, but I didn't have a better plan until I learned about indexing.
DH's employer cut the matching, and DH wanted to quit contributing. I wanted to increase his contributions from the minimal 5% to get the match, to double it to replace the match. I tweaked his withholdings to keep the take home roughly the same. After that, I realized the extra tax benefits - EITC and state EITC matching, and started a plan to keep doubling his contributions when expenses dropped or income increased. So 5% to 10% to 20% to 40%. Oldest was starting college, and reduced AGI was a bonus on the FAFSA.
After the old 401k recovered, and I was convinced about indexing, we rolled that 401k to Vanguard into VTSAX. A couple years later when the mortgage was gone, I pushed the 401k contributions to 55% to max it, and I opened Roth IRAs for both of us for the first time, and agreed that DH cut back and stop teaching summer school.
So in many ways 2007 was about the time we truly got serious and began making progress in retirement saving.