From my experience:
Buy a cheap house as soon as you start working, this stops you getting into the habit of having money (after being at school, uni, on the dole for awhile you can live on anything) and make sure to pay alot more than the minimum repayments.
Drive a low maintenance, low fuel piece of crap holden nova for 8yrs.
Once you have enough cash available in redraw on home loan go and buy the sucker outright. The arguments on here for never owning a car are legitimate but I did find a big difference in insurance quotes when I let them know the car was owned and not financed at all.
- Now the happy owner after oh so long of a 2000 2 door bayside GTT and pretty damn sure the novelty is never going to wear off.