I'm happy to share how we "make it work" on similar salaries in a HCOL area, but it sounds like you have things pretty well set up too.
My spouse and I are both in helping professions, and have worked at nonprofits and in education, and we have two kids. We are similar ages to you.
Some of the outlines
-bought a house in 2010 at a relatively reasonable price, at least compared to current. A little skill and luck involved here but we wouldn't have done badly if we'd invested that money in stocks and kept renting
-we rent out rooms in the house and live in community. I know this is definitely not for everyone but we lived this way before while renting and liked it, so no sacrifice and in many ways an improved quality of life if you like the people you live with
-public schools (though of course daycare was a big expense for years).
-bike almost everywhere, occasionally transit or car-sharing. Again, it helps that we love biking and figured out how to do it with kids. We can take the bus on the first day or two after a snowstorm until the main streets are plowed, and we don't let the hills or heat or wearing suits stop us. During some jobs I've had that were further than my biking comfort level, I was able to do bus+bike. Our 4- and 6-year-olds can both ride pedal bikes to school ~1 mile away.
-generally frugal habits though nothing to write home about.
-didn't have college debt, thanks mostly to frugal generous grandparents although I must add that I did cover about 30% of college through my own very hard work. Still, there is a lot of privilege here to flag and be grateful for and that needs to be paid forward and around. Did have grad school debt.
-am not supporting any parents or extended family members (again, privilege)
I think that is pretty much it. We max out both 401ks and invest pretty normally.
It seems like it's a long time to FI using "just" a 100k combined salary and basic frugality and time, especially in a HCOL area. Those who are shortening the timeline all seem to have some extra thing they are doing... a side gig, rental income, extreme frugality, something.
I'd love to see your case study or more detail on your situation if you'd like to share. We're not FI and I don't feel like we have it all figured out (college and future healthcare always loom as uncertainties), but I can at least say that we are making very good progress toward FI on what we are calling an average salary (although the median family income in the U.S. is ~75k I think, so we can still count our blessings with these salaries even if, on this message board, they seem low)
Also, for the general discussion: in my years in the field, being in a helping profession should not necessarily be equated with loving your job -- or even necessarily making a positive difference, though obviously that's the goal. My work happiness has gone up and down for many "standard" reasons unrelated to my field... attributes of the boss and teammates, micromanagement vs. latitude, reasonable vs unreasonable expectations, stability vs. chronic funding problems, more or less exciting/interesting projects/work, etc.