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Assets are appreciating faster than ever...They may very well be, but consider that what "asset" means to you is probably not what "asset" means to an awful lot of people.
"Yeah, the mortgage company approved us up to $650k... it's a lot, but we found a house in that range. If we're tight on cash, we can always take out a HELOC against the appreciating price! Everyone knows housing prices only go up, they're not making any more land!"
"I just invested in a new car for myself! Sure, it's more than my annual income, but the loan payments are cheap and it's got a butt massager!"
"Yeah, just invested in a brand new Harley. You know, they hold their value well..."
Etc.
The problem with a leverage-heavy approach to things (as Ramsey knows very well - he made, and lost, a fortune doing leveraged stuff in the 80s) is that as long as the conditions that existed when you got in remain, it works great. As soon as those conditions change - property values decrease, your margin loans get called, etc... you can find yourself in a huge world of hurt, literally overnight.
If you take the "Ramseyian" approach, avoid debt outside a few things, spend a good bit less than you make, save, etc, you might not get as fabulously wealthy as you could with leverage - but you're also far less likely to lose it all than you would be with leverage. And that's worth an awful lot in terms of "actual life satisfaction" (though perhaps less if you consider net worth the only thing of value).
My wife and I have made a variety of "suboptimal" decisions (based on the current debt-leverage-max-out-credit-its-free-money style of thinking about money) over the years, and are probably worth somewhat less than we would be had we taken some riskier approaches, but we also have avoided the high risk, and, to us, high stress approaches to money.
Our goal (well, mine, mostly, since I work and my wife stays at home with the kids) is to have our finances automated enough that we don't really have to think about them, and have the surplus to do things we want to do - we just tend to save up first, and then do the things, instead of taking on debt. If we don't have the money, we don't do the thing. It's a very low stress way to handle finances, and while I will absolutely grant that it's less-than-"optimal" from some perspectives, from how we care to have money handled in our life, it's quite nice. And there are very few high-risk downsides we have to worry about. Markets go up? Neat. Markets go down? Well... OK, but I'm not worried about someone calling me to tell them I own them half a million, tomorrow, or else.