Getting older does not mean you magically change into a completely different person who wants to sit around the house all day; in fact, the only thing that has really changed is that I have far less ambition, less need to achieve, than I used to. As a result, I have even less patience with the need to go in to work every day instead of going out to play.
I've written a number of times about how I let my DH persuade me to spend more -- that saving 15-20% was enough, that we make plenty of money and deserve nice things. And hey, we've both got jobs we really enjoy, and both of us would be bored just sitting around the house all day with no intellectual challenge, so we can happily work until we're 60 or 70, right? YOLO!
Not. Now I'm 50, and I've spent half my life doing interesting/hard paid work, and I am ready to do something different. I want to spend all winter skiing; I want to throw the kids in an RV and travel around the US before they go off to college and their own lives; I want to write and explore and sleep in and figure out what's next. My work can still be interesting, and the people are awesome, but after 25 years, there is a sameness that I can't escape.
Alas, over that past 25 years, we also inflated our lifestyle, so I am stuck for another @7 yrs. I'm working on DH, and on my own expectations, and hoping that we can cut that back some (I've already got him down from 12 yrs). But if I could turn back the clock, I'd tell 30-yr-old me "you think you want to ski now? Boy, just wait until you've been doing this for another 20 years -- you'll be ready for a permanent ski trip. AND you'll be in better shape then, too, because you've recognized your mortality and so are eating better and exercising regularly. So suck it up, live on less, double your savings, and you'll be free by 50 instead of just wishing you were."
Tl;dr: If you feel the pull of YOLO now, just wait until you've been working for a living for 25 years. . . .