Good credit is a valuable tool. It has saved my butt several times. My ex-wife would run up credit debt for un-neccesary things, like elaborate Christmas gifts and birthday gifts to people who we barely knew. Also way too many dresses and shoes. She has continued this pattern and is now on her third husband.
Rather than making payments on an expensive fairly new car, buy a 5-10 year old vehicle with good fuel mileage and a good reliability record. Concentrate on paying it off. Keep it till it absolutely dies. (I currently have a 1991 Toyota 4-cyl, wife has a 2000 Nissan, both paid for and show no sign of dying) No car payment, good gas mileage, insurance is low. A 2-job family should have 3 cars, so that when one car has an issue, there is no panic, and you don't spend a lot because you NEED it fixed quickly.
Move close to a good job, or get a job close to a good home. I am currently 5 miles from my job, a perfect range for an e-bike (weather permitting). I did well on a California house, and instead of a minimal down payment, I made a very large down-payment on a small house in Utah. Home prices have retracted, but since my house payment was cheaper than rent, my wife and I were able to survive comfortably on unemployment for a few months while we looked for work.
Many people who had a large house payment didn't have that option, and now have lost any down payment and equity they may have had when they were forced to "walk away" from their house.
Not having a car payment (or any debt) and living close to my work has given such peace and freedom. I've found work in Kansas, and homes are affordable, my goal is to find a house I can pay cash for (bank repo?) and though I'm certain it would not be impressive or luxurious, it will enable me to survive an uncertain future.
Yeah, Dave is cool. We lost his TV show because we downgraded the cable service (oh well, we'll get it back eventually) and I have cancelled ALL my credit cards and just have about $1,000 left on the cards, then I have Sallie Mae. 
That one will take awhile, but I'm hoping to have it paid off in two years. The thing that Dave says about the credit card being a security blanket really is true IMHO. A soon as I got into it I cancelled all my cards except one, which was the first card I had ever had. It had been a trusted friend for so long, that one was difficult. YNAB is a program that works well with the Ramsey principles that keeps track of all your accounts and is a zero balance based budgeting program based on the idea of giving every dollar a job. Man when I started using this program it felt like I got a HUGE raise because you can very easily see where your money is going and you can budget for future expected (and unexpected) expenses and it keeps a record so after you have been using it for a while (like a year) you can go back and see how much you spent in each category so you can anticipate how much you will need to budget in each category in the future. Of course I have the old saver's remorse of, "Why didn't I do this years ago?", but oh well that's the past. I just keep remembering the saying of what we do today cannot affect what happened yesterday, but it sure can affect what happens tomorrow. Yes, cash is king, & DEBT IS DUMB!!
