Retarding "the leap", I was around 5 years in before quitting (crazy, I know!). I've had saved up enough for 2-3 years without salary. I have only considered quitting once we had a solid vision for the end-product and a working prototype that is "playable", although lacking content, balance, and some features. Before this stage, we were pivoting every quarter and that was not a good time to make the leap.
The decision on where to stop and call it Early Access was very hard. We were adding things till the last moment, but what helped us was our Kickstarter where we promised a deadline. From that point it was basically "what can we possibly put in given a fixed release date" and it was just a lot of prioritization to include only the most important features. Feedback from beta players helped with this a lot!
The trouble with release is that now any changes must be backwards-compatible, making all coding 3x harder and slower. Any new features now are much more costly.
Good luck to you and I hope to read similar post from you some time in the future :)