Financial freedom is a common goal and an amazing thing to experience, but it often gets tied together with the idea of penny-pinching today so that you can save for the future, with the end goal being to amass as much money and stuff as possible.

Regular people call this saving for retirement. Others take it to an extreme and call it F.I.R.E: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

And some people don't save at all and just hope for the best. 

But a lot of us somewhat goal-oriented folks at least feel like we should be making sacrifices today so that we can eventually retire fabulously wealthy.

Whether or not we successfully do that, of course, is up to our personal motivation, willpower, and ability to strategize.

But is accumulating money and stuff even truly the highest ideal? Should it really be our priority? Do we really need to feel guilt over not making those sacrifices today?