I want to get enough time at $MEGACORP to have FU money. After that, my fear is a lot of smaller companies are working on thing even more boring, but with less scale. Gluing a domain-specific API to a few LLMs sounds boring. I got into tech because I liked learning it, but a lot of it is getting repetitive.
No such thing as FU money. As you get more you want more, or if you don't then your spouse does. There is such a thing as "I can tolerate a 3-6 month job search no problem and not jump at the first opportunity" money. It makes 90% of the difference, especially in the long run.
Of course there is such a thing.
Lifestyle inflation is a known phenomenon which you (and your spouse) can choose to avoid if you prioritize it, not some immutable rule of nature.
If the treadmill of accumulation that lets someone believe "there's no such thing as enough" ever stops, I think they would be shocked at how quickly they realize what enough actually means.