Starting my adult life with the markets in freefall made it hard to get in the habit of investing. All through school, people told me "most people don't start investing until their 30s, and end up in a worse than they ought to because the time-value of money compounds a bunch if you add a few more years." I thought I knew better than to be one of those people.
Instead, I ended up keeping a lot of savings in cash during years when the interest rates were approximately 0. I've tried to get better at putting money into the markets over the past few years, but my financials look very different than they might have.
> In other words, 2008 had no meaningful impact on you then.
People who graduated in the late 00s might not have accrued big financial losses, but it had a very meaningful impact on my comfort investing.