He's not advocating to go into debt for a lush Bahamas vacation.
The value of long-term debt to fund real assets is that inflation corrodes the debt value, while boosting the asset value.
Even if the asset doesn't appreciate above the inflation (meaning you do nothing all day), you can still make money if interest is lower than the inflation rate.
It's a shame that lending institutions also understand this and attempt to set their lending rates accordingly.
When a lender pays interest, even if it's below inflation rate, banks still make profit, because they didn't have to put any real assets, so the opportunity cost is zero.
I don't know who you are and how much you make. The first thing I do when I get paid is "pay my future self". Believe it or not, food comes second. The order of business is 1) Invest, 2) Save, 3) Spend. Never the other way around.
I follow a mix of "7 accounts.." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auzLhKvsxnQ), Intelligent Investor (for investments - mostly VOO or VOOG with some SOXX). I perhaps save more than I should (I 'live less').
This is a principle you can do irrespective of the amount (as long as it's over €$1000). I don't mind changing phones every 3 years, and put those $200 to work for me instead of the other way round.
But their communicational goal here is just to say they consume less than their income would allow in the short term.
I've removed the bloatware, using NoRoot Firewall and keep most apps NOT running in background.
The main usage is Signal, Spotify, Netflix, Firefox. I don't need to upgrade it to a faster CPU/GPU/RAM any time soon, so why should I? I got a good case for it, so it survives the falls/drops.
I genuinely don't see a reason to upgrade. Plus, when I DO change a phone I need to spend 2-3-4 days to reinstall apps, copy songs/ringtones/PDFs, remove bloatware, change settings on apps/battery/etc. I don't just boot and run with it.
But hey, that's life.
Also you seem to have cause and effect backwards. When people like him buy new homes and put them on the market, rent goes down because there are now more landlords competing on price.