It was certainly a dislike of being poor, that instilled a need to save and invest.

1. Something I enjoyed (ie was INTERESTING and CHALLENGING) and was good at.
   
   
2. Something that paid well or had opportunity for me to invest in the company stock and benefit from my work.
   
   
3. Something that would matter. I originally wanted to get into nuclear fusion to "solve" the energy crisis of the 1970s. I switched to semiconductors as transistors and lasers were things I could do that would have me in charge of my own "experiments" with a BS degree from Cal and some masters classes from Stanford to fill in the gaps. I read today that JUST NOW the Berkeley/Livermore team published a paper in three peer reviewed journals with 1,000 authors listed of their FIRST fusion reaction that was net positive energy in the lab. Glad I didn't wait around... though I could not afford the masters and PhD required to get a leadership role at that lab.
   
   I'm really proud of my work to make 250MB/s communication via fiber between computers in data centers work at a profit back in the late 1980s... and several other cool things like leading a team of brilliant PhDs to be the first to pump 1GBs bits through 1km of fiber with fiber, transmitters and receivers our guys made in our lab in the late 1980s.
   
   At times I still miss it but the stress was part of what convinced me to learn to invest so I could try other things such as providing financial content on the internet and our efforts at Suite101 to do what Amazon and Facebook ended up excelling at.