All renting does is put a middle man between you and the bank. You're still paying a mortgage, the landlord's, and you get no benefit of building equity for your payments.
I'm sorry, dude, but your advice sucks. We are all held hostage and slaves to the debt based system whether we have debt or not. In fact as the currency is rapidly devaluing it can make a lot of sense to take on some debt because the debt loses value over time, making it easier to pay back, and allowing you to own an asset that is appreciating in value vs the currency. You just need to be able to service the debt and not overextend yourself.