Most people never figure this out. There are people who become multi millionaires and somehow lose it. I mean if you have 50 million dollars not only can you be financially liberated for life but your children, their children, their children, and so on, can also be financially liberated, if you are strategic, smart, and focus on wealth preservation rather than buying lambos.
A lambo looks nice, until you crash it. Any gadget might be cool until it breaks. At the end of the day the actual good life comes from the relationships you have with the people who love you. It's the relationships that generate most of the happiness for most people, so this is the actual reward for achieving the financial independence. If people realized that it is about relationships and not "money" or "gadgets" or even "abundance" then the concept of wealth preservation takes on value. Wealth preservation is valuable because not only can you free yourself for life by becoming financially independent but if you really do the math, every additional $10 million dollars allows you to free another person.
If you are frugal you can try to maximize the amount of people you can potentially free. Maybe you want to set up a trust fund so your children don't have to suffer like you did? Maybe you want to take care of your parents so they can age gracefully? Maybe you have a wife who you want to allow not to have to take on a job she hates ever? All of it becomes possible with enough money but if a person spends it down on lambos, a mansion, a personal chef, and all that, then at the end of the day they have less to give to their families.
It's a choice each individual who achieves high net worth has to figure out for themselves. How much money to spend on themselves and how much should be specifically set aside for long term multi-generational wealth preservation. If you ever achieved just 50-60 million then you could put 10 million for each of your kids in assets which appreciate at 8% or so per year, which pay dividends on top, and which benefit from compound interest so such an extent that they'll each receive an income in the $200,0000-300,0000 range for life. If people really need more than that to be happy let them work for it.
Agreed. The best part is if you gain the habit of being frugal, it becomes a way of life, a mental quality, a life attitude. It doesn't change with wealth increase. Big wealth buys you time, which is a very, very expensive good. That's the best thing you can buy and, because is so valuable, you must preserve it. Then there's that, you can give to others, both time and money!