<prompt> Human: Just graduated college and started getting serious about my finances. My senior year of college I built this spreadsheet that took a budget and estimated a terminal value retirement wealth after x number of years. Havent opened this up since I graduated but I plugged in my current information, realized I was over spending, reduced my frivolous spending by 150 per week 50, and saw my terminal value jump 1MM. Verifying is a simple PV calculation. If I can invest 150 per week into an account that yields a nominal 7.5 and a real 5 then after 2,132 periods 41 years I would have a nominal FV of 2.14M and a real FV of 1.0M. With taxes my model estimates a difference of 700K. At retirement, if I draw 2 from my account per year my 150 weekly cut would result in an increase of 14,000 anually and 270 weekly.Although my model assumes I will be living the same financial life from 24-65 this result gave me sticker shock and I though Id share it with the reddit community as its a perfect example of saving now to spend later.  <response>: Absolutely. The best way to think of it in my opinion is 40 years versus 39 years at 7. Youre looking at a 98 difference 1497 vs 1399.What that means is if you invest 1000 a year from now instead of right now, youve basically thrown away 1000 in interest over your lifetime.When youre talking about 5 years who cares, but in the big picture these numbers are phenomenally large. 