How to become a successful software engineer or designer ?

Like going out and buying a German luxury car when a Toyota, Nissan or Ford would do. Or buying a 3000 square foot home when an 1800 square foot, with a much smaller mortgage, would have been large enough. If your under so much pressure to get those overtime hours just to pay your bills even though you have a good paying job that it makes you miserable then even though you had an opportunity to be successful and would have been you just blew it by putting yourself on a really fast treadmill in which if you fall off you lose everything within months. I see it all the time not only do young couples buy to much house but then they have two babies and spend fifty thousand dollars on a back yard swimming pool , that's here in Vegas in Cali it's probably a hundred thousand, that they will never use , six grand on plantation shutters , three grand on water treatment system and two new BMW cars and if anything , like medical bills for the babies or themselves or anything happens that house is in the foreclosure process within six months.