Sure you can gamble that after spending a year working for that money you can make up for what you missed. It's possible, or you realize that as you get older, things get more difficult to do. Say you find out that you have arthritis and what you could do 2 years ago, you can't really do now. Maybe you find out that during that year of extra hours was when your daughter got cancer, and she's going to die within the next 6 months. You never get more time, you're just hoping the free time you have later makes up for what you're not doing now. The problem is that a lot of people never make it to later.
