For me, the crash of 2007/2008 was my real wake up call. It was during this period that my wife and I reevaluated life broadly. Since then, we've approached things very differently. For us, the 2007/8 crisis was more of a symptom than the disease, a symptom we finally were able to recognize with clear eyes. For us, it wasn't only a failing financial system, it was the recognition of a wobbling culture. The American economic system is over financialized, however, I think the general American sentiment of how life is to be lived is over financialized as well.

People view success primarily through a lens of financial value. People buy larger houses than they need, more expensive cars than they need, more material bullshit than they need. They express their own personal value as a human oftentimes in monetary terms. A job is only sought after for how much fiat it pays. Debt is of no concern. Most people rarely consider the politics or broader impact of the decisions they make, meaning people will buy things from large corporations that actively (as a function of their business) go against the very basic interests of the person buying their products. I don't see that a majority of people look at the human experience in its entirety (and with a historical perspective) and rationalize typical behaviors of the day...why people do what they do, who is influencing them, what their best interests are, and what the impact of their decisions happen to be.

So (without going on forever here :), our lifestyle change has been very broad. Yes, we have a very diverse asset base (@dandesign86, you mention lots of good assets :). Yes, we have a deep pantry (and use it like a grocery store, rotating the new with the old...not the deep bunker type of doomsday food storage thing) and could live for several months without going to the store should a huge economic or weather-related disaster hit. Yes, we have eliminated all debt. But, just as important, we have detached ourselves from a financialized existence. We only buy things we truly want or need. We don't buy from most corporations unless there are no alternatives and we need the thing that shitty corp is selling. We learned about the food system and the correlated health system and substantially modified our interactions with both. We take much better care of our privacy and selectively choose which technologies we engage and avoid those that we believe are not healthy relationships (I'm looking at you Amazon, Google, etc). Ultimately we are trying to create a life experience that is not based on consumption-driven happiness, but more driven by an awareness of the realities of the world - many of the existing systems (economic, health, food, etc) are not designed to act in our best interests and it is up to us to be behave in very educated/intentional ways so as not to be chewed up and spit out by the systems, systems that are primarily designed to improve both the power and wealth of those who architect and manage them in the first place.