One of the things I did early in my career was live as frugally as possible and dump all extra $$$ I could into quickly getting rid of my student loans, car payments, etc.

Talking to a lot of peers over the years, I've realized that most people carry around insanely high levels of debt and grow accustomed to spending multiple thousands of dollars per month on debt servicing. It's crazy how much of a difference it can make to get rid of those and free up all that cashflow.

Obviously, this isn't doable without an income buffer, but if you are able to cut down expenses for a while and aggressively pay down debt: it was one of the best decisions I made early in life.