I was fortunate enough to realize this at a relatively early age. I was earning a lot of money, but spending more and realized this was a potentially never-ending cycle of ever nicer cars, vacations and homes, but end with me dead of a heart attack before I'm 50. TBH I truly think that was my first wife's plan.

I followed your plan except that for me #2-4 was taking some of the extra money from my job to invest in semi-passive income investments, and then using that to invest in more assets.