Income is great but no one values their $100,000th dollar the way they value their first.

At some point intangibles like work life balance, stress, commute time, and regular old enjoyment of the job drive the bus.

I'd make a ton more as a consulting engineer than I do now but I don't mind straight 40 hour weeks vs 50+ and all hours on call and no travel now that I have a family.

Surely it would be nice to invest more/save more/have more but at some point you have 'enough' and for my family my wife is down to 3 days a week and I'm in a much more relaxed industry. We should be able to get the kids through school/retire reasonably if she goes back to 5 days. We do without some luxuries friends might have but that's life. We've come to terms that a bit of simplicity is worth a whole lot of time together and less stress.