Roody, it's mostly because the idea of working 40 hours a week with a couple of weeks of vacation a year for the next 30-40 years is very unappealing to me. As a kid I would read a lot. I would take an encyclopedia and just read about random stuff. I loved looking up other countries and seeing how different those people lived from us. It became obvious to me that living in the USA that I enjoyed a standard of living that would be considered wealthy in 70-80 percent of the world. I figured I could work as little as possible and still be able to live far more comfortably than people living in third world countries.
I get a chuckle out of people who move to other countries because it's cheap to live there. I've looked at a lot of places and have pretty much determined that if you have to work for a living there is no where that is as cheap to live as here in the USA. Part of that is because there has always been a lot of wealth so there is a lot of stuff that is thrown away or given away that wouldn't even be available elsewhere.
The other reason is because I believe that within my lifetime oil will be so expensive that one will no longer be able to enjoy the same standard of living we have now. I've just adapted my expectations to that reality now instead of letting it surprise me later. I thought the best way to prepare for that would be to live simple and have low bills and debt.