When I was really young, I had an entrepreneurial streak. One story that family would recognize was that I set up a stand in the summer selling frogs to the neighborhood kids. I'd get them from a pond nearby. When they died and my customer was upset, I realized that selling an insurance policy was a good opportunity. Pay ~1/3 more and I'll give you a new frog if your frog dies too soon.
Meanwhile, I took a bunch of pride in saving up my money and finding a good deal on a new video game or whatever. In junior high, I organized a big mail order fireworks purchase. With volume you got free stuff. In exchange for organizing it and procuring the money order and stuff, I kept the freebies. Always looking for deals.
Later, I found a PC manual with instructions on leading BASIC in the back. I became a computer geek very young and was pretty good at it. That lent itself to a career that I enjoyed early on. I went from the first employee to one of the owners. I can't say that I enjoy it like I used to. My enjoyment though always stemmed from the underlying work and skill - not from the compensation, power, influence, prestige.
That said, a separate theme also emerged. I was making pretty good money as a high school student and through early college years doing software work. That included a SEP-IRA when I was about 17 years old IIRC. Meanwhile, I took a liking to my economics courses and was always pretty good at math. I recall sitting in class doing financial projections forward decades and deciding that this intersection of being in software, keeping expenses low since I was surrounded by young people living on far less (and/or debt), and seeing clearly how savings compounded was powerful and would work.
And so I mostly kept pushing savings rates higher (but not mustachian high) through my 20's. If it came up, I'd explain it that at age 30 I wanted freedom to choose what to do, including able to choose to go to grad school, move internationally, buy a home, start a business, have kids, etc with a lot less financial pressure. Back then, I basically took as a given that i'd probably work 'til 55-60 but that if I could save enough by 30, I could choose to stop saving for retirement. I hit that goal and some... but marriage was a small set back financially (but a big step forward overall). My 30's were a relative rocketship.
This all appealed to me as I grew up bouncing between an obviously struggling parent and a not-so-obviously struggling parent. As a result, I seek financial security more than material goods. That underlying desire for security and freedom drove me.
Now that we've mostly achieved it, I'm working on fighting the habits of the last 20+ years : identity too tied up in work; fear of quitting; obsession over cost control; worry I can't go back; vacillating between guilt that I might not be making the most of myself, that I could help family and society; worry that I have no in-real-life mentors that have followed the FIRE path; and gratitude that I've achieved a degree of security and freedom that none of my immediate family have and which I never expected so soon.
I think most that know me well might be surprised at first but not in retrospect. If I told them how little I personally made in salary and how much of our company's profits were left in the company, they'd be perplexed how we pulled it off.
Anyway, now that the underlying joy of what I did is mostly gone (though today I did some darn good code updates to a program I initially wrote in ~2005) and that security aspect is satisfied, I'm having an awfully hard time making work a priority.
I'd not call myself a wanderer but I feel like I aspire to be one... Meanwhile, I definitely fit the frugal aspect of this community as well as the optimizer aspects.