Personally ... I have zero faith in my ability to retain an income. Thus, I live in a way that appears much poorer than those around me. But that's because I haven't sold myself over to slavery by financing. Look at the way houses work ... you pay twice, you finally own it, and then if you lose your job the house still gets taken away because you never really own the land, you rent it from the state.

We have no possessions anyway. So, in my life, I refuse anything that I do not already have the cash in hand for. Yeah, that means I eat twice a week, but so what.