Make your money make YOU money!

I've become very fiscally aware as of late. I bought Quicken 2006 Deluxe to track our expenditures; a co-worker gave me a copy of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and several worksheets in Excel to help with creating a budget and monitoring it. I am looking to get a Roth IRA for myself and Paula both. I'm really excited about it - there's something to be said for saving up money and disciplining your spending habits. Today's world is one of instant gratification and the average person doesn't put money away for large purchases; instead, it's all about financing a purchase with no interest until 2010 and hopefully nothing bad will happen between now and then.
Anyway, I got a little preachy there. My bad.
The real reason I wanted to do a quick post is because I'm looking at getting life insurance. I don't want whole-life because it's so expensive and you get so little back, so it's going to be term. So I found a $250,000 policy that will cover me for 30 years. It is $25/mo. So I got to thinking: what if I designated $100/mo to life insurance and put the extra $75 in just my ING Orange Savings account every month for the next 30 years? The account compounds monthly. So plug this into the Financial Calculator and see what nice little fund Paula and I would have at the age of 56, supposing we have $5000 in savings to begin with: Starting: $5000; Annual Addition: $900; Years to Grow: 30; Interest Rate: 4.75; Compound annually: 12 times
Not too bad.
Now, if you grab a Roth IRA through Vanguard (10-12%), max out your contributions of $4000/yr for the next 40 years and live an additional 20 years after you retire, your annual withdrawls available during retirement will be $207,947. Yeah, and that's per year.
But if I wait 10 years to start, giving me 30 yrs till retirement, that $207,947 drops to $77,286. The moral of the story: start saving NOW!