I understand that point. However at least in the UK there are many things that could make a big difference to current or future quality of life -- including sev

I understand that point. However at least in the UK there are many things that could make a big difference to current or future quality of life -- including several you mentioned that are definitely still relevant here -- that someone would find a lot easier to achieve if they were earning more than most of our age 35+ software developers will have made for most of their careers. In other words, the ability to increase how much you are making at work and how much you can improve your quality of life are still going to be significantly correlated for plenty of age 35+ devs here. An increase of say 20% or 50% in TC could make a big difference to things like whether you can afford to live in a nice area, take your family on a nice holiday, pay for private healthcare or education if you have a reason to, or retire early. I suspect that kind of marginal difference in income is much less relevant to those things, except possibly for healthcare, for a typical age 35+ dev working for a FAANG in a US tech hub, whose TC might have been so high for so long that the idea of not being able to afford any of those things might not even occur to them.