Sounds easy, no? To achieve it I moved to another country, learned a new language, took a 50% pay cut, and living here requires a lot more work just to be comfortable ... but I live halfway up a mountain in the middle of a nature reserve, it was worth it for me.
Depends on where you are, where you go, and how you live - a lot of the world lives off less than $10USD a day.
Before I moved I was getting by, now I'm financially comfortable despite having much less money.
Commutes are definitely a quality of life choice! As a kid my dad offered to let me ride my motorcycle to elementary school as a bribe to move to a small town. All the local kids would ride their horses to school so he figured a riding a dirtbike down the trails to school was basically the same thing.