"The flux capacitor," asked Doc with his patented befuddled look. Then, with sudden realization, he bursts, "No, no, no! I'm talking about the 401(k) plan!"

READ: 401(k) participants doomed by the tree of knowledge

Ol' Doc, ever the mechanical genius, was also not bad when it comes to financial wizardry. He knew the power of the 401(k) when he first laid eyes on it a few years earlier. He immediately started saving as much as he could.

When the new discrimination laws became effective in 1984, he concluded, Safe Harbor and all, it was better to get his only employee – one Marty McFly  –  to participate in the plan. Marty readily agreed. Before he left in the DeLorean for 2015, he made his initial $1,000 deposit into his account.

Marty saw the computer in front of him and wondered if his old password still worked. The screen seemed as if it came from a different dimension. Rather, the flat panel seemed to be lacked a dimension, namely depth. His password was valid and he began to explore.

Once he got over the fact his meager $1,000 was not worth $20,000 (remember, he was only 17 years old, and that impressed him as being a lot of money), he noticed something quite strange about the plan. In fact, he barely recognized it.

I won't belabor the differences (you can read about them here in "5 Dramatic Ways 21st Century 401k Plans Differ from the Original 1980s Version," FiduciaryNews.com, June 2, 2015). But this trip down memory lane did lead to a rather interesting conversation with a recordkeeper friend of mine.

No, it wasn't about classic 1980s coming of age movies. It was about 401(k) plans, specifically, it was the one thing Marty McFly would not have thought would change since his brief exposure to the magical retirement plan in the 1980s.

My friend had an interesting observation. Now, he's been around a long time, almost since the very beginning of the 401(k) era. What he remembered from that beginning is the same thing many might remember.

Recall when IRAs first came into existence, just a few years before the 401(k) phenomenon. Every ad, every pamphlet, every bank promotion contained the same theme: They were all about convincing the good people of this Earth to save for their retirement.

READ: A 401(k) truth your mother never told you

It was all about the simple act of putting aside a few dollars a day into their personal retirement plan. It trumpeted the miracle of compounding. It promised a future of retirement comfort, greased by the oil of what amounted to a personal pension plan.

The onset of the 401(k) ascendency brought with it the same motif: save, save, save! Investments were an aside, overseen by the wise eggs high on the corporate ladder. Sure, there might have been a lot of things that today we consider inferior about those early 401(k) plans, but this emphasis on saving wasn't one of them.

By the 1990s, though, we saw an extreme shift in employee education. Those annual compounding graphs of rising wealth lost prominence to asset allocation charts, risk tolerance measures, and historical investment class returns.

The industry tried to make honest investors of everyone, and, giving the roaring 1990s, all too many employees bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

But the tumultuous "Lost Decade" of the first decade of the new millennium soured many on the entire idea of participating in retirement savings plans. At the same time, academic studies began to show it was the very act of saving – saving early and saving often – that often meant the difference between success and failure in building a comfortable retirement nest egg.

Today, we've gone back to the future. Employee education programs – at least the good ones – again emphasize savings.

Rarely any more do plan sponsors allow product salesmen the opportunity to turn everyone into an investor. No, they prefer their employees become savers.

And, with this, we've seen more and more "one-portfolio" solutions – single funds that permit the employee to wholly delegate the investing particulars to a professional money manager.

And that's a world Marty McFly would be at home with.