What if the time comes when we trade our sacrifice for a payout and we find it wasn't what we had hoped?

Years ago I was sitting at dinner with my wife discussing the final details of closing on our new home in Bel Air, California. My wife, being the smarter of us, was lamenting the cost, and said that it was a big undertaking for our family, and she was second guessing whether we should do it.

I told her that was a big problem for me, but not because of the house. I said "I've been working every waking moment, non-stop for nearly 30 years. Every life event I skipped, every holiday I didn't celebrate, every experience I'll never get back was a promise I made to myself. That promise was that one day, it would enable me to do something extrao...