I have a few friends at Google who, after working there for close to 10 years, now are thinking about retiring to Portland, or Vermont, or North Carolina. The idea has certainly crossed my mind, that if I wanted to live in a rural area I could buy a house free & clear and be set for the rest of my life. I met an innkeeper in Alaska once that had worked in tech for 20 years, lived like a grad student, and when his kid was a teenager, bought a sailboat, sailed around the world, and came to settle in Seward, Alaska because they'd fallen in love with the town. I've heard it's pretty common in investment banking to have "your number", work for ~10 years until you hit it, and then retire to Fiji.