[esotericn]

From personal experience.

The step change for me was financial independence.

It's not about income, but wealth.

A basic example - the difference between a 50K a year job and a 200K a year job is enormous if you have no wealth.

If you are FI, then other factors like the nature of the work, the hours, the location and so on are far more important.

Because once you're there, it becomes clear that money has far less value than time - you only need enough of it to do the things you want to do (of course, if the things you want to do require a lot of money, that's a possible case...)

[buboard]

Money is a tool to buy time. More money makes that time more fun, but I agree, the best use of money is to buy time.