I sort of did the lie flat thing.  When I quit my last "real" job trucking and went back to just coaching gymnastics, I took a big earnings cut (about 50%) to just work at something I enjoyed and made just enough money to keep a roof over my head and own a couple of good used ICE vehicles, 1 of which I could have lived in once I retired, which was sort of my plan until I ended up a cripple.

You could say I laid flat when I quit banking because I couldn't stand wearing the penguin suit and making gobs of money by selling dogshit in gift boxes to the low hanging fruit while kissing my bosses ass to get the next promotion.  I still worked pretty hard though at my other jobs which I didn't like either for other reasons, so it wasn't truly lying flat.  Coaching gymnastics was easy work just playing with the kids really.  The only thing I didn't like about that job were the owners who wrote my paycheck.  If I had owned my own gym it would have been perfect, but I was very bad with money after college.  Spent all my big paychecks on drugs and pussy.  Lived paycheck to paycheck after quitting the banking biz until I went into trucking.  By the time I quit that and had some savings, I was too damn old to start a gym from scratch.

Anyhow, I never made any great effort to get ahead and be a big success financially.  After my marriage failed, I realized I didn't want a house or expensive car or even a wife.   There was nothing I needed to work hard for.  All I needed was the Maslow basics plus a computer for communications.  It only took making a lower middle class wage to do that.  It made it very easy to move around and live nomadically.  Very low stress once I got rid of the bitch wife.  I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted with nobody telling me what to do.  No responsibilities, kids to worry about or wife to make happy.  I got rid of the last of my old debts with bankruptcy prior to going out trucking and never went in debt again.  No bills to worry about.  I was about 40 when I went out in the truck, free and clear of everything, spent 7 years doing that and saved a small nest egg and then coasted coaching gym for another 8 year before breaking my neck and going out on disability at 55.

Last 12 years would have been perfect if my health had been better, but I wouldn't have been able to retire at 55 if I had been healthy.  So that was a tradeoff.  In any case, I wasn't much of an asset to the capitalist class as a worker through my life.  Just skating by was enough for me.

RE