This is a fascinating group. Wow. I guess I'm mostly surprised that so many of us are big boat owners but we're not all trust fund babies or dot-com millionaires. Hard, diligent, disciplined work and we pull it off one way or another.
The dot-com millionaires may own yachts, but most are not boaters. Most don't have the time or desire. Typical is to have a crew deliver the yacht to a location and then fly in and spend the weekend or perhaps a week on it. Often they helicopter to it. Most were not lifetime boaters (there are some exceptions) and it's the five star "Yacht" service they love, not the boating. The greatest luxury and wealth in life are family, friends, and time. Many extremely wealthy are addicted to or just love what they do to make money and won't slow down.
The kind of boating those of us on this site do is probably terribly boring to most trust fund babies, use to a faster, more exciting style.
When we decided to retire, there were those who were in disbelief we'd do such a thing. My former boss who was 82 at the time, now 86, couldn't believe it but then realized considering what he knew about us, he could. Of course, he couldn't believe it when Bill Gates told him years ago he was going to retire. And fortunately, even at 86, he does love his work and would be lost without it. He'll never retire.
When working, we always looked forward to our time off, so we could get on the water, and working was a means of supporting that and of eventually moving toward retirement.
I think those on this site are truly boaters, who love being on the water, love moving on it in a boat, just love boating. That's really the commonality of the forum. I've known people who were on boats a lot but never really boaters. We've even corrupted a couple of those and taught them the joys of boating, talked one into retiring and into selling their 200' yacht with an 11' draft, and getting a smaller boat they could actually take to marinas along the coast. They've had incredible pleasure with the change.
There is one common factor among those of us on this site. It's not just a love for boating. It's greater, a passion for boating. It brings something great to our lives. It makes everything else we do and we've done to get to this point, more meaningful. It's not as important as family and friends, but it sure outranks most everything else. We're away from the boat and we can't wait to get back to it.
How we all got here isn't important, although very interesting. When we're on the water, none of that matters, we're just fellow boaters. We're among the lucky ones. Many people don't take time to enjoy life when working, because they feel they can't, and don't retire because they have nothing else they want to do, not because of the finances.
We both had jobs we loved, still work some more as a hobby than work. However, there was never a time had you asked us if we'd rather been working or on the water, we wouldn't have said "on the water."
I know some others here are members of other forums as are we. The one thing though that truly distinguishes the people on TF is a love for boating, not simply a love of owning a boat. Look at OC Diver's photos of his cruise south. An experience that comes only from a boat. This forum is very unique and special. Others are either boring or very annoying.
I think we're all a bit like athletes in one regard. They continue to play as long as they enjoy it and physically can. Boating brings us joy and as long as it does and we are physically able to do it, we will continue to do it.
Bought a truck a couple of days ago for my wife that cost as much as the dang boat 
