There's a nice parable about working hard to have free time later: http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html
1. The fisherman develops a serious illness and finds he can no longer support his family. His wife, who was barely getting by on a fisherman's income as a housewife, finds herself working at a local bar, serving drunk, lecherous men every day and night. His son and daughter find themselves unable to afford an education and really don't want daddy to die. With mounting medical bills, the son finds himself involved in crime to support his family and is eventually sent to prison for life for a crime he didn't commit. The daughter meets a wealthy man and everything is great until he starts hitting her. But at least she can support her father, lying on his deathbed in hospital. Daddy eventually dies but by that point she's stuck with 2 kids married to a man she hates.
2. Oh but medical welfare would solve the problem in #2? Setting aside that this is contrary to my stated scenario (a country without medical welfare), consider this scenario: the fisherman loses his fingers and toes in a freak fishing accident.
3. Oh but somehow he managed to afford an insurance policy that paid out on disability? Setting aside how unlikely this is to be for people barely making a living wage, consider this scenario instead: the nearby waters are polluted by an American oil extraction firm, and the fisherman finds himself scrubbing toilets at McDonald's to support his family. The American happens to come by one day and leaves him a nice tip.
1. Share market crash. 2. Change in government regulations. 3. Getting sued. 4. Or simply bad luck. 90% of all business fail anyway.
It can cause a business to go bankrupt, and a wealthy man to become much less wealthy, but otherwise either you are stupid or you are diversified; and it's easier to 'stay there' than to 'get there'. If a stock market crash or, say, Madoff hurts you then it's bad luck; but if it destroys you then it's stupidity.
For example, Bill Gates should still be wealthy even if Microsoft went completely bankrupt at any point since mid-1980ies. Sure, he probably wouldn't be on his malaria campaign in that case, but it wouldn't hurt his life that much.
> I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death
In that setting, any cent that you can accumulate on you bank account is a life insurance. I can totally understand that the GP wants to spend some time in his life working like crazy so that for the rest he can work less while still enjoying a moderate amount of safety. It certainly beats working part time all your life and worrying about how to pay today's food, heating or rent.
It seems to easy to get stuck in between the two, though - working hard, but not hard enough to retire early, but still not having time to enjoy life as the Mexican fisherman.
instead of thinking of work, think of it as creating value. If you are employed by somebody, you are creating value for them, which you take a % as salary/wage. If you work for yourself, all the value you create, you get to keep.
This means, that to get financial freedom, you must work for yourself. This is difficult, and often impossible if you don't already have any capital. I feel this is the true problem with society - that the poor cannot retain 100% of the value they generate because they lack the capital to do so, and therefore, forced to work for somebody else, and get back less than 100% of the value they generate.