Like many of our forum members I came across YMOYL a long time ago. At the time I went through all the steps, but the one that had the most meaning to me was tracking expenses. I was already reasonably frugal because that's always been my nature, but the tracking step and applying the life energy calculation showed several areas where I felt like I was overspending for not much bang for my buck. Things like eating lunch out on work days were wildly out of wack with where I wanted them to be. For about 3 years I tracked expenses closely until I was pretty happy with how the chart looked. Then I stopped tracking.
A few months ago I thought about tracking again so I decided to start with a macro view. I crunched the numbers (ok, actually I took my last pay stub from 2016 and then added info that wasn't on it) and figured out the following big picture. I spent 35% of my income on income taxes and social security withholding, 31% went into savings (401k, roth ira, a few non-tax-advantaged investments) and the remaining 34% covered all the things I actually spend money on (rent, food, eating out, travel, car expenses, etc.) This with me not really making an effort to watch what I spend. Admittedly I don't have a lot of expensive tastes. I wear jeans and old pullover collared shirts to work. I own a 15 year old Honda that I inherited from my father. (with only 34k miles on it. Assuming that it will last to 250k miles, given how little we drive I will be dead before it's worn out...) I still have most of the furniture I got in my first apartment in NYC. But we drop $100 or so every week eating out on Friday, usually with friends. And are wine club members at several wineries. And take at least one big vacation per year plus several smaller long weekend type trips. In other words I spend money where I enjoy it and not where I don't.
The reality that I'm not depriving myself but still only spending 34% of my income made me realize that I really don't need to don a scratchy hair shirt and deprive myself just for the sake of saving a few sheckels. The biggest part of my actual spending is rent. Yes, we could maybe save a few hundred per month if we moved out of this city, but the reality is that we LOVE our neighborhood and our apartment and the convenience of being close to things.
The reality is that I still enjoy my job so I don't really feel any urgency to quit it. But if I decided tomorrow or next week that I did, I could. At my current burn rate, even if my assets only keep even with inflation I could live 20 years. That's probably not enough to retire on since I'm only 50, but if I keep working another 10 years it likely will be, especially if I continue to save during that time. So with all that in mind I've decided not to start tracking my spending again.