The passion of man
The sea is deeper, the deeper you go into it 
Economics; work.
The first question:
Work for the sake of what?
1. Rent
Ultimately, you need somewhere to sleep. Having some sort of home, habitation, apartment.
I think the big thought, perhaps something that a lot of Americans don’t know is that if you live abroad, in a developing country, let’s say somewhere in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam Cambodia etc., what that means is you could rent a brand new apartment, very very nice, furniture and everything and all utilities included, in the range of $320 a month, $300 a month in Phnom Penh Cambodia. 
I think Americans like to complain; do you like to complain about the price of rent, the cost of living etc. However, don’t people realize that you have the power and the ability and the freedom to dictate wherever you live, how to live, went to live, went to live, when not to live?
2. Food
The second one is food. Food is a funny new one; it could be insanely expensive, or it could be insanely cheap.
For example, just go to any local Mexican meat market, and you could buy a pound of beef liver for only $1.99! Because beef liver might have 10 the amount of nutrition as typical meat or flesh meat etc., what that means is you can’t eat as much of it, even if you wanted to. For example, I could eat maybe 4 1/2 to 5 pounds of ground beef, 8020. However with beef liver, I might only be able to eat about 2 1/2 pounds of it.
Let us say that you’re the average person, you could maybe eat what, a half a pound of it? A quarter pound of it?
If you did the math, theory you could feed yourself on $.50 to a dollar a day! And this is in America!  that is $15 a month, or $30 a month. And for beverages, if you just drink tapwater or filtered water, which is essentially free, and let us assume the only luxury drink is coffee, but even coffee could be insanely cheap, if you get coffee on sale etc.
So let us assume that in the states only $30 a month.
3. How do people blow money?
It seems to be 100,000x to conserve money than spend it.
However, the trillion dollar question is still; one should one conserve money, for the sake of what, towards what ends, and one should one spend money, also for the sake of what?
4. The true scarce desirable thing
Time and energy, physiological power and energy.
Essentially the true idea of wealth is maximum time, maximum freedom of time as well as maximum physiological energy. 
For example, even if you had all of the wealth in the world, all the time in the world, but let us say that I do sleep deprivation torture on you, and you might only sleep 30 minutes a night. Certainly nothing will be worth it.
5. Leverage is the key
I think ultimately, if you consider leverage, economic leverage; this is the key.
For example, let us say that you’re being paid in US dollars, with the typical American salary, and let us say that you’re living abroad in southeast Asia, Vietnam Cambodia Thailand, Bangkok, Hanoi, Saigon, Phnom Penh etc — only $300 a month in rent. If this were the case, even becoming self-employed, it is very easy to earn $300 a month. To just cover your living expenses.
So the more I think about it, the more I’m curious, is it primary issue here a knowledge gap one? People don’t know that this is an option?
6. We are getting suckered?
Certainly there are certain things being marketed to us, some sort of superficial desires. For example, is the iPhone 77 going to be any good? Your Tesla not going to get some sort of design upgrade in the next 100 years?
I think thinking long-term is more clarifying. For example, let us consider the digital Leica M9, which retail for $7000 USD, when it came out. It could barely shoot at ISO 800 without noise! Now any thousand dollar digital camera can blow it out of the water. 
So I suppose the secret then is to give a deep critical thought about superficial things, and to not get suckered by superficial things.