Yes, ideally you should earn as much money as possible, and spend as little as possible. Money only does you any good when you don't spend it.

Though, if you never do anything with your money then it's pretty pointless.

I get the point here, and I'm not advocating never spending money or doing anything with your money, but the vacation house and expensive cars seem like unforced errors that don't really add much to one's life, especially relative to their costs.

That's what I was attempting to sarcastically point out :)

Sorry, I'm British so I have to turn my sarcasm detector off to read HN!

Indeed. To put it another way: when your income variance is high, averaging (smoothing out expenses) seems pretty important -- at least, it would be to me. Calling a cavalier lifestyle intrinsic to entrepreneurs (in general) seems misplaced. It sounds more OP's individual choice.