I'm a senior consultant at a large well established partly state owned european telco. Life isn't about work, it's about living.
That puts you in the top 10% of income earners in Sweden, a country in top 20 of virtually every income metric: mean and median income (PPP), GDP (both nominal and PPP) per capita, GNI (both nominal and PPP) per capita.
One thing I realized is that if you don't work hard and generate wealth, your next generation of family won't enjoy the life that you had, as wealth compounds really quickly and not accumulating makes generations start from scratch.
If that is not your life goal—creating a family, looking after generations, etc.—then you are doing the right thing.
It is a cultural thing.
Many countries with strong family values have none of this bullshit mentality either, it's perfectly possible to have a family and look after generations and have an healthy relationship with work and money.
If anything money tear families apart more easily than they get them together
I am always much happier and healthier during part time work, but it isn't quite enough money to fully participate in the society I live in.
The only thing my parents managed to do for me was get me a PC, at the expense of things like clothes or even food - turned out quite the return on investment for me and them.
But the point is that a lot of people around me started with very little and I’ve not seen much of a difference in their fortunes, sure having stability and initial capital gives you more options, but the quality of life - the elusive “happiness” was mostly tangential to that.
In countries that either don't experience economic growth (or have only found it recently e.g. India and China), you get what you describe.
(Obviously this isn't a set-in-stone thing, but the general pattern holds)
I need to be careful that it doesn't interfere with my responsibility to raise independent kids who don't want or need money from me. This takes time and energy to make sure they can make the most of the social infrastructure available to them e.g. their school.
I'm very restrained in how I spend money for private consumption out of concern for setting an example that's unproductive e.g. making the kids feel pressure to earn a lot of money to sustain a lifestyle of luxury.
Except when it doesn't, so my parents went through high inflation in 90's (~10% or more every year for a decade) and their parents through monetary reform in 1953, which saw savings "re-calculated" by communist government order anywhere from 1:5 to 1:50. And that's not nearly even the craziest country out there when it comes to inflation and monetary machinations of the ruling class.
This seems like a very upper-middle class mentality. The vast majority of people don't ever pass on wealth. Hell, go back 30 years and getting an inheritance was something the ultra-wealthy only did.
What parent doesn't want their kids to be at least equal to, if not better off then they were?
That has been a strength in my career and one of the keys to my success: I don't need to sacrifice any more than I'm willing to in order to be successful, and I can stand firm for those things that are important to me, precisely because I can walk away from any job without disaster.
Most people in the world, even in the west, don't have such fortunes of making good money while coasting.
Norway, obviously oil rich which drives the financial, legal, and IT secondary industries and makes high returns for the citizens.
Switzerland .. it's literally gold moving in and out of bank vaults that appears to be the biggest driver of the countries economic makeup: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/countries/41/export-basket
No disrespect to either country but there's nothing like watching oil flow past in a pipe or bars of gold mature like wine in a barrel to increase wealth while reducing total hours "working".
Not like Texas' and California's oil? Or New York's finance industry?
Zoom into the parts/states of the USA actually generating wealth and you will see pretty similar patterns: natural resources (Norway's case), finance (Switzerland), heavy and precision industry (Germany).
Always cherry-picking the Nordics to win any socio-economic argument seems like HN's favorite placard card. Pretty sure there are also unionized workers in the US working for state projects who also barely clock in any hours while making good money. See how cherry picking works?
People in Mexico work far more hours than the Nordics and the US. Same in Eastern Europe. And Asia. Why is that? Why don't they just work 20h-30h/week for $5k wages?
When you look at people who have more money/stuff, remember they generally fall into one of two categories:
1. They come from wealthy families,
2. They've spent their lives working and now they get to fill whatever remainder they have left with things, but they can never get those years they spent working back.
You can't choose 1 so don't waste a brain cycle thinking about it. The question is, do you want 2?