What about the cool experiences that money can buy? This may not cost a lot, depending on what you want to do, but it does have a price tag. Not that I'm advocating the job treadmill as a lifestyle, but making a lot of money (say, by building a startup) has its benefits. When commercial space travel becomes a reality, I want to be able to buy a ticket to check out the earth from space.

(I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment of the post, but it seems to set up a false dichotomy)