Obvious for me to say: there's a point in time when you're going to stop working and you're going to be draining away your safety net regardless, because you're retired.

So with a sabbatical now, just think that you're making time now so that you can have a better retirement later because you'll be ready for an enjoyable retirement as opposed to needing to take two or three or five years of your retirement, just calming down from your crazy career.

It's definitely not an easy thing to consider. Do evaluate with an extended pros and cons list and weight each item in the list.

Burnout for me weighed extraordinarily heavily.

If you're a software engineer that has been working for 7+ years and don't have enough savings to survive 6 months off work or are so behind on retirement savings that this would seriously impact your future I think you should work seriously on getting your finances in order.

That depends on what you do with that. You can also look at this as an investment in yourself that will substantially increase your income later. If you have something to show for it after you sabbatical, you can actually win long term.