This did not require a decade and a half of unhappiness! Did it require me to sometimes put aside my immediate wants for the sake of the future? Yes. Did it require some measure of frugality? Also yes. But I also had great times with friends. I got married and had kids. We took vacations, spent time with family, engaged in hobbies, etc.
There are some things I couldn't do while I was working hard. A gap year was out of the question. But those things are not necessary for happiness.
You can. If you earned a significant amount of your savings because of stock or an exit event then it was, likely, biased in some way. It is truly great for you to have had everything come together as described.
> Now I'm wealthy enough to provide anything my family could reasonably want for the rest of our lives, barring some kind of black swan event.
This is not the usual outcome. Plenty of people have burned out going for it. Sometimes multiple times. And some have struck it big with little to no effort, right place right time as it's said. There is no right answer to this topic that anyone else can prescribe. It's up to you and if you don't own the path and the outcome you will feel a level of "waste" if and when your life doesn't yield the expectations you've set.
Perhaps they are not necessary for happiness but I bet if you had took that 3-12 months to do whatever it is you wanted to do it'd be the time you look back at most fondly.
Compound interest is great but salary tends to compound as well. At least in the tech sector. I've gone from 60k to 200k in about 8 years. So even though I'm missing that nest egg saving today is way easier than it was in my 20s.
Maybe it's just how you sounded - maybe you're telling people not to sacrifice their future for their present. But no one should sacrifice their present _completely_ for their future.
Mostly because, well, you don't know if you'll have a future. "Stay healthy" won't stop you from developing cancer, heart disease, etc.