I read the article and thought there was quite a lot of 'slosh' in there of "I deserve this because of my stress. Two cars in Manhattan, one of them a Porsche to drive Dad to the country club to play golf...uhhhh...OK...cut that out. $24K budget for clothing....uhhh...OK. that could probably be halved or cut by 25%. Exotic vacations - the costs for those could be managed with the airline points and credit card offers. Private school for kids....hmmm...perhaps a private tutor might be cheaper or Dad could do some home-schooling. Hope to get into Yale so have bought into the "gotta donate to alma mater" guilt trip. The price just to go to Yale is very high, so I wouldn't be adding to that. Eating out like they do and Grub Hub...it would probably be cheaper to hire a 'personal chef' to make a whole lot of meals they could freeze...or Dad could learn to cook while at home and do that himself saving money. Weekends at the Hamptons - minimize those and perhaps use some of the local parks and other amenities of Manhattan - they could even use public transportation ! :-O Going to a therapist for guilt - OK....how about writing 2500 or 500 words a day - you would have your novel in a year or so...a bit of discipline and a sense of accomplishment and contribution (especially if you home school and or cook for the family) and possibly the therapy wouldn't be necessary. Gym memberships, etc., could do other types of exercise that are free (running, buy a set of weights, meetup groups for workouts, etc). Other entertainment - read books, go to free museum days, rent out or checkout movies from library, have a small garden, etc, etc.
They could truly save a lot more and get out of the rat race early as they have a wonderful opportunity to accelerate to FI. And, they could still possibly enable their children to get into Yale or some other such school.....
But, as stated at the beginning, they haven't learned the lesson of satiation....