To the OP, I have several thoughts and comments on your position.
First, I'm not sure if you are aware how incredibly blessed you are to be in your position. Regardless of age, that level of income is very rare. Don't want to believe me? Find one of those online sites that let's you put in your income compared to the world and your given country and you will find you are in great shape, in the top .05% in the world using $170K as your income. I'm finally in that income range but I'm a few decades older than you. You do not seem to acknowledge that you realize your unique position in any way, and just wanting to make that observation directly to start.
My next point is regarding your last paragraph. I think you need to realize you are on an early retirement website. Many of the people focusing on retirement here are not looking in their 50s or 60s they are looking into their 30s and 40s, so keep that in mind when you see that most discussions here are on retirement. A previous poster commented that it is more about freedom and I would agree with that. Couple that with my earlier point about how blessed anyone is to be at this point and it changes your perspective a bit. I have found a little bit of word play has helped me immensely in my life. Instead of the overtly negative "I have to", such as "to retire I have to work hard, save money" change it to "to retire I get to work hard, save money". You get to save a huge amount of money, which will be a much lower percentage of your income than others. At $150,000 you could save $75,000/year and still save more than some of the folks doing well on this board who only make $60K a year. This is a privilege and it can be hard to see that at 24.
Some earlier posters also talked about preparing for the unknown. I'm old enough that when I started working the belief was still that you find a great job and you stick with it for 40+ years and retire there. The company and you form a partnership and that is how life works. About ten years after I started my working life, that social "contract" got placed in the garbage disposal and shortly after that I got let go from a job that was paying be $120K over 15 years ago (so you could argue equivalent to your pay now). It had nothing to do with my performance. Everyone loved me and I had great reviews. It was just "business" and sales had tanked and my position was eliminated as they had someone who was paid half what I made who could do the job halfway across the country and manage my team remotely. I have been blessed enough that my path has continued in a very good track since then, but it could have, and for many of my friends and colleagues did, turn out very differently. The shift I spoke of occurred for me in the space of two short years where I went from feeling very stable and thinking I had another thirty years at the company I was at, to being sent out the door. I do not wish that experience on anyone, but even in today's well understood environment of little company loyalty and longevity more people are surprised rather than not. Having money set aside for the rainy day versus spent on endless frivolity is never a bad thing, and I believe nearly everyone on this board will agree with that given the mindset that is attracted to these forums.
You have more than enough money to do both, as many people have said, and I would concur. You have the luxury of saving a massive amount of money by the standards of 95% of the US population, and still having a massive amount of money to enjoy yourself. Assuming you began your working career a couple years back at a similar income level, that savings you have would indicate you have been holding the purse string pretty tight so I can understand your desire to loosen up a bit in your youth. I think you can release another $20-40K/year from going to future savings and still be on the road to a huge savings pile very quickly. Obviously you need to determine if your retired lifestyle will require $100K a year or more, but hopefully you pick up some of the other lessons of this site that one can have a whole lot of awesome experiences and not spend a lot of money.
Finally, with regards to the investing climate, I think one can always point to some trouble on the horizon. You've got a long enough time window where I would say you've got nothing to worry about. Keep in mind that I am still at a 90/10 mix on my investments at a time in life when most would say I should be 60/40, so my risk aversion is a lot lower than most. I subscribe to the comment made by someone discussing Bogle's index fund investing process that "investing in index funds will not outperform the market, but it will outperform your neighbor". In the end your lifestyle will be determined more by how you outpace your neighbor than by what your total is. I do not share the utopian view of some here that removal of regulation will be a net good. I think lack of regulation caused the financial crisis we just went to and I do not believe memory of what occurred will outweigh greed. Given the same open range, I feel institutions will make horrific decisions that will cause massive crashes again, so I'm not a fan of significant rollback. But I do feel that whatever occurs, the US markets will still be leaders compared to our neighbors and if that changes I'll change my mix in international versus domestic. It's all about outperforming your neighbors. In the end I still feel our corporate environment gives us many more tools to do that and therefore I'm bullish on US prospects regardless of what the president does.
