Without checking the math, it looks like you probably could have bought the same house with a 15-year loan and stayed within DR's guidelines. So in your case his advice would just be to get the 15-year loan. But I suspect you are far from the norm. Most people in your shoes would have been looking at houses that would give them 30-year payments in the 33% of gross pay range. So his advice would keep them in the more conservative price range that you ended up purchasing in.
Bottom line for me is that there are a variety of solutions for every financial problem. While DRs advice may not get you 100% of the financial benefit in every case, I think it is generally getting you 75% of the way there in almost all cases. On this site we (myself included) tend to get caught up in the minutiae of Roth vs traditional vs 401k and Vanguard vs Fidelity vs TRP. In reality, doing any of those is going to get you 80% of the way there, and the improvement from making the "right" choice is only going to offer marginal improvements.
The fact is that most households in this country make less than $60K, and will do just fine with a paid-off house, no debt, and modest retirement savings, assuming SS does not completely fail. For those people, DR's advice is a godsend. For others, taking his advice is not going to be the ideal path, but it is not a bad one, IMO.
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