>What keeps us living paycheck to paycheck is that we spend more than we make on stuff we don’t need.

This is still true, though. When I turned 40 in 1994, I decided I had lived with debt long enough. So I sold my plane. my boat and my 2nd house. In the next four years, I paid off the remaining mortgage on my 1st house and installments on my cars and credit cards. Was it hard? Yes, it was damn hard. It's like kicking a habit like a drug addiction, but the drug is easy credit.

I never went into debt again.