It's no secret that baby boomers are facing a retirement crisis.Yet despite the hardships faced by their parents and grandparents —including delayed retirement, investment losses, and quality oflife adjustments — the majority of Generation Y members have not begun to think aboutretirement.

According to a new survey by online investing firm Scottrade, the majority of Gen Y(55 percent) have not started to save for retirement, and fewerthan a quarter (21 percent) are actively planning for retirement.Additionally, 60 percent of Gen Y saved nothing toward retirementin the last year, and 40 percent plan to save nothing in 2011.Twenty-one percent plan to save just one or two percent of theirincome this year.

Generation Y is defined as those born between 1983 and 1991(currently aged 20-28). These individuals are often youngprofessionals who are at the beginning of their careers; theperfect time to start saving for retirement. Yet 73 percent ofthese generation currently has less than $25,000 saved forretirement.

“What Gen Y may not realize is that older generations basedtheir retirement planning on the three-legged stool of SocialSecurity, savings, and employer pensions,” said Craig Hogan,director of customer intelligence at Scottrade in a statement. “Theapproach their parents and grandparents took toward saving is nolonger appropriate because the old model doesn’t exist. By the time Gen Y retires, theymay have only one reliable leg to stand on – their own savings –and they need to plan accordingly.”

Gen Yers gave 29.2 as the mean ideal age to start saving forretirement. But if younger members of Gen Y start savingimmediately, they can nearly double their savings in retirement,increasing their chances of having guaranteed income. In fact, 50percent of baby boomers, who have been hit hard by the financialcrisis, recommend starting to save earlier than age 25.

Nearly half (46 percent) of boomers didn’t start saving forretirement until age 35 or older. But, if given a second chance, 58percent of boomers would have start saving at a younger age and 45percent would have saved more.

These statistics provide a valuable lesson in retirement savignsfor Gen Y; 20-somethings need look no further than boomers’ current retirement picture to see the effects ofdelaying saving for retirement. Almost half (47 percent) of boomershave $100,000 or less saved, and more than a third (37 percent) areconcerned that they will have to work in their retirement years.Twenty-three percent of boomers think they’ll still be working atage 75 or older.

“Considering the boomers’ plight and how easy it is to invest onyour own in a very low-cost way, we would have expected to see GenY reacting by increasing its savings,” Hogan said. But the datashow that's not the case.

Fortunately for Gen Y, there is still plenty of time to turntheir retirement plans around — and they know they need to. Almost three-fourths of Gen Yers(73 percent) realize that they are not saving enough forretirement, and previous Scottrade survey data revealed that Gen Yfinds investing fun and interesting.