As I said in my original post, I've been very fortunate, and my situation doesn't apply to everyone even in tech. But yes, though I started out lower than that at the beginning, it just grew rapidly over time. This is the pay grade I've been at for the last several years: https://www.levels.fyi/company/PayPal/salaries/Software-Engi... (3rd party source, not implying anything about its accuracy)
> Then I could understand saving so much that you don't worry about retirement. But if you're making "good" but average salary in the bay area, and even saving a lot, you're still eating into savings to take months and years off.
I'm going to ignore compound interest and taxes for simplicity here. If I save 50% of my salary, and take one year off, I lose two years of savings -- one year of spending and one year of making up for what I spent. If I save 10% of my salary, and take one year off, I lose ten years of savings -- one year of spending and nine years making up for what I spent.
> Maybe an easier way to ask this is... What would you consider to be enough saved in the bank, at say, 35 years old, to take a whole year off?
This part of the answer is actually terrible advice because it's so over-simplified, this is just meant to make a point. The shorthand rule is at a 50% savings rate you can retire after a 20 year career. So you don't really need to have anything saved at 35 beyond what you'll spend to take time off, because when you come back you'll still have more than 20 years left to work.
Keeping my savings rate high is fundamentally what allows me to do this, more because I'll make up for the "lost time" quickly than because of what I've already saved.