Perhaps. I'm pretty well opposed to debt, as I've seen how it can bite people over the years, so I simply don't play those games. I'm far more likely to buy something used and pay a lot less anyway, or, ideally, something with a couple problems that I know how to fix for even less, and then fix it and use it.

The problem I have with debt is that you then have to be able to service it. There are plenty of folks in the FIRE forums who go back and forth on the topic - "To pay off your mortgage or not?" is a holy wars topic. The argument for not paying it off (and arguably taking more on) is that your investments in the market will outperform your cost of the loan, so it's free money. And it works well, for at least some time - but the FIRE movement is largely a post-2008 movement, when all the money sloshing around meant investments go up. Regardless of anything else, investments go up, so put money in them, and while few people suggested going strongly leveraged, the sentiment certainly lurked around the edges.

We'll see how that holds up if the market is cratering around the time one is unemployed. Meanwhile, "Don't have debt, have savings, and live well below your means" has been tested through an awful lot more years of human history than "Put it all in index funds."

I'm certain I've "left money on the table" with my approach, but I also keep my downside risks limited, and should I have reason to really clamp down monthly expenses, I can do so very well.