jja79 said:
The price of time and health is much greater than money and it can't ever be gotten back.
I'm mid-30s, so what do I really know? But you can quantify your time today and that math is the bedrock behind so many of my decisions.
E.g., some ballpark math on how old my mom is, how many times I see her per year; I know roughly that ~90% of my face-to-face time with her was while I lived under her roof until I left for college. That same math, assuming I raise her to launch correctly, applies to my daughter. And the fact that she's almost 6 means I'm a 1/3 through that chunk of time. I really like being her dad and I really only have so long to do it daily.
I know there's a balance, and I can't for her sake, or mine, helicopter every minute of her life. But there are defined opportunity costs for every work trip, every happy hour, every boys trip, etc. Full gas, I'll give up a weekend from the fam to hang with the boys on a trip. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to get on a plane Sunday night for a ridiculous work trip for something that could be done on Teams for the sake of my boss wanting us to be in the client's office. That calculus no longer works for me. Likewise with Euro calls at 5AM or India calls during her bedtime (literally right now for me as I'm multitasking with TexAgs).
Further, on average, I only get to ski 40 days a year. At 36, I wager another 1,500 more blower days in my life. I can't miss a single one. That's not enough! Even worse, I probably only have another 30-40 opening days of baseball left. I swear if work gets in the way of that PTO day one more time.
So again, I don't have time for work. That's my motivation to "coast FIRE". I'm still a driver and outcome oriented with some element of my identify rooted in work, but it needs to be on my terms.