This sounds like something a young person would say. It's certainly not what most successful "professionals" would say. Most professionals feel like they're on a work treadmill same as everyone else, except they're doing it to support a more expensive house, more expensive cars, more expensive clothes, more expensive food, more expensive education for their kids, more expensive frills than people who make less money.
The consumer society we live in encourages/creates spending patterns that almost unavoidably rise right along with our salaries. These patterns of high spending then feel like they're "necessary" and they raise the bar for what feels like a safe retirement nest egg. It is possible to avoid this consumer-society treadmill, but it's not easy -- it requires swimming against the stream -- and a relatively small percentage of people do it. Avoiding it is basically what the Mr. Money Mustache website (referred to in other posts in this thread) is about, and it's interesting to note that the people who seem to gravitate to that plan often retire with a fraction of what "professionals" would consider a safe retirement nest egg.
