Your ability to have free time and maximize your money probably happened because you worked on cool stuff in your 20s. I know a bunch of people a few years older than myself who would like to settle down and start a family now, but can't because they spent their 20s either unemployed, in a variety of clerical jobs, or in organizations (eg. school systems) that are chronically underfunded and overworked. They don't have either the money or time to start a family without falling a rung down the socioeconomic ladder - let along work on cool stuff.

A lot of popular blogs (eg. Marc Andreesen's) divide up your career into phases, where you optimize for different things in each phase. Your 20s is usually the "development" phase, where people hire you for what you can do in the future. Your 30s is the "harvest" phase, where people hire or acquire you (at substantially increased rates) for what you've done in the past. You want to optimize for skills & experience during the development phase, because otherwise, there's no reason for anyone to hire you during the harvest phase.