Hey PeachFuzz,
I'm a fellow TriStater, NY just north of your old digs. I grew up here, went to school in upstate NY, have worked my entire career in NYC/NJ and have moved back to the area I grew up. We have family ties to the area and have no intentions of leaving.
My wife and I are both in our mid to late 30's with a net worth of about $1.5m, our only debt is our mortgage @ 3%, $9k student loan @ 2% and a car loan at 0%. The car loan just made sense at 0% could have paid cash (Our other 2 cars our fully paid for), the student loan is so cheap and small the $150 a month is not worth eliminating, so the mortgage is the only real debt of consequence and even that is kind of a joke, we have over 35% equity in our house we put 20% down 4 years ago. We have 2 children as well no where near college yet.
We could sell our house and move to many places in the country and be FI right now, however we love our life here so I deal with my crappy hour plus commute (for now), I will most likely transition to job closer to home for less pay in a few years and stop the city commute once the mortgage is closer to being eliminated.
I would not be considered a true Mustachian as we lead a far more luxurious and decadent life than MMM would condone, there are months where my spending can almost match his annual spending, yet before we bought our house we saved almost 80% of our income, now it is in the 30% to 40% range and we our still extremely frugal for our income, but most people on this blog/forum would not approve of our lifestyle and would laugh at the thought of use being frugal.
My name is appropriate :)
Anyway you just have to keep at it and choose what is important to you, if you like being in the NY/NJ area realize sucky commutes more years of work and larger nest eggs are part of the compromise, as MMM would say don't complain about it either make a change in your mindset about what FI is going to be based on your location or change your location, for me I know FI is further down the road as I am not changing my location.
-Mister Fancypants