The excitement of living on the edge

I read and hear often and in many places of well-off people reminiscing about when they were younger and living hand to mouth and how, paradoxically, those were the best times of their lives. I've never thought to wonder too much about why that is until just recently.
I sat down last week to pay the month's bills and realized that we had come to the end of Steve's LA Times buyout money. Eighteen months later, we'd run through the $22,000. We did well, I think, putting $16,000 into IRAs during that time, and putting $14,000 into home upgrades and repairs. (Hmmm, how exactly did we do that??)
I had a moment of panic as I wrote out an enormous check to cover our Visa bill (granite countertops and aging car get the biggest share of the blame), but after taking a deep breath and asking myself "Is it really true that we're in trouble? Nah.") I had a curious sense of excitement well up. "Okay, now the game gets interesting. How can we cut back? Let's really get intentional again about our spending. Here's more incentive to learn to cook new and delicious meals at home," and other intriguing thoughts surfaced.
I think living closer to the fiscal edge makes life more interesting and more vivid because it spurs us to be more conscious and aware of what we're doing. It's a prompting to mindfulness. It forces me, at least, to be more awake and aware and to consider alternatives that often are simpler and more satisfying.
I won't argue that a life of plenty is very appealing, lots of toys to play with, less worry about finances, frequent and enjoyable indulgences (not to mention social approbation.) But after a while, a life of plenty can be deadening, so much stuff and distraction, more choices (each of which costs us mental energy to make), more to maintain and to clean and to store.
A season of simplicity and fiscal contraction feels like the right thing to do from time to time. I've read that humans are meant to fast from time to time, that our bodies expect and are attuned to have times of leanness and hunger, but we never experience that any more.
I find that I'm rather excited about the idea of a spending drought, a consumer famine, a break, however minimal, from this crazy whirlwind material culture we are in...