The lower you start the lower the "more money will not improve my life anymore" number is. I have no desire to live in a nice neighborhood, drive new cars and drink fancy beer so the threshold where money stops improving my life is probably a couple tens of thousands of dollars per year lower than if I wanted those things but I still aspire to own vacation house so that pushes the number higher.

I think there's also some pretty big cultural differences between the US and western Europe when it comes to decisions to pursue money or not.