were they all broke in early 80s?

thanks, so lemme get this straight again
I'm just trying to establish if the other 3 were forced to downsize, or were they actually in serious debt?

Steven said openly he blew his money on drugs and made some bad decisions in life, plus paid for his wife and two kids
Joe was told he owed money to the band (whoever the band was, seeing how Joe giving the money back didn't help improve their financial situation) and had a high maintenance wife

and the other 3 were just downsizing ?
for the amount of money coming in from not-so-very sold out shows, and low sales of Ruts and Hard Place, they couldn't afford to pay for the big houses and fast cars?

but then again, Brad selling out his guitar collection for a fraction of their worth would indicate he needed money much and fast

It's hard to say. As aerostooge pointed out, there is a difference between "broke" and "BROKE". The band members have talked about this 1980 to 1984 time period but we obviously don't have access to their financials to know what their assets were or to what degree they might have been broke. I do get the sense that Joe and Steven were the worst off of the 5 original members. I tend to think that Joe may have been in the worst place of them all. Joe had left Aerosmith and basically had to start over with a new band - the Joe Perry Project - and build it up using his name and connection to Aerosmith. Still, that isn't as good as having the "Aerosmith" name behind him. I think we've all heard the story about Joe meeting Billie in '83 when the JPP were doing the "Black Velvet Pants" video and Joe took her out to eat. Joe tried to pay for the meal and Joe's credit card came back to the table cut up and he had to admit to her that he was tens of thousands of dollars in debt. So, whether Joe was just "broke" or "BROKE", we don't know but he was certainly in a really bad place. I'm sure that money was a major reason that he decided to initially reunite with Aerosmith.

Steven was certainly in a bad place too. We know he lost (sold) his plane and likely a bunch of other stuff to cover his lifestyle and he's admitted to losing most of his money from the 70s and being broke during this time period, as he had an enormous drug habit and Aerosmith wasn't doing well and they likely weren't making a lot of money. Now, Steven did manage to hang onto his house up in Lake Sunapee, so I'm leaning towards saying he was "broke and not "BROKE". Someone truly desperate would've hocked the Lake Sunapee house at some point to pay bills or to pay debts owed to dealers. Steven didn't sell the house, so I tend to think he never quite got to the "BROKE" level of desperation. Unlike Joe, Steven was still in Aerosmith and Aerosmith could still make some money tour, even though they weren't necessarily filling arenas on a nightly basis from '80 to '83 like they had from '75 to'79. Still, Steven likely made a decent bit of money. Steven blew through that money pretty quickly though, with his addiction issues being a major reason why. Jack Douglas has recounted how on the RIAHP tour that Steven would sit outside of the tour accountant's hotel room waiting to be able to get some of the receipts from that night's show so that he could take a limo somewhere to go score drugs. So, not only was Steven spending a boatload of money on dope, Steven was also compounding it with other terrible financial decisions - i.e. taking limos everywhere, even to go by drugs - at a time period in '82 and '83 when the band clearly wasn't doing well and when he needed to adjust his lifestyle financially.

Brad has mentioned selling guitars during this time period and Tim Collins has stated that Brad initially came back to Aerosmith for the money. So, we know that he couldn't have been doing too well. I'm not sure about Joey's financial situation during this time period. I sort of get the sense that Tom did the best during this time period, as while he did sell his house and move into a condo sometime around '81 (per Tom in the "Walk This Way" book), this was an intentional move by Tom and his wife to downsize and adjust their lifestyle as they realize that things had changed and that Aerosmith wasn't doing well and likely wasn't going to generate the kind of income that it previously had. Tom has stated that making this type of lifestyle adjustment allowed him to always have a nice, comfortable place to stay. So, I get the sense that he wasn't broke and desperate like some of the others might have been during this time period. Tom mentions in the video below that one of the first real splurges that he made was buying a Ferrari Dino in 1975, which likely cost a good bit of money. He also mentions still having it, which tells you that he wasn't having to hock his prized possessions left and right during this time period in order to stay afloat financially, unlike some of the others mentioned above. That tells me that he likely did adjust his lifestyle and allowed him to financially better survive these tough times in the band's history.

In general, the guys in the band were in their mid-20s when they started making big money and they were largely just big kids in adult bodies. They didn't necessarily watch or take care of their money and they didn't understand the financial/business side of music either. They were spending it about as fast as they made it and I get the impression that their wives & girlfriends were helping in that regard as were all of the other people around them. I think eventually after they got sober and got a little older, they started to learn more about the business and the money aspect and started to watch those things a bit closer. 

Tim Collins gave a perfect example of how little the guys knew financially about the music business and about business in general in the "Walk This Way" book. He tells a story about Joey Kramer seeing the gross figure of $5 million dollars for the 1984 "Back In the Saddle" tour in a music magazine (I can't remember which one) and Joey apparently came to Tim Collins demanding $1 million dollars as his share of the tour receipts. In Joey's mind, he simply thought "$5 million dollars divided by 5 band members must mean that I'm due $1 million as my part of the tour receipts. Tim Collins had to spend time trying to explain to Joey that those were the gross receipts - before all of the expenses were paid and that this actual portion of the tour receipts would be much lower than that. I can only imagine how frustrating that conversation likely would have been for Tim Collins, having to explain gross receipts to Joey, having to walk him through all of the expenses that occur during a tour: flights, cabs, limos, busses, 18 wheelers to transport gear, needing to pay the road crew, nightly hotels for the band and crew, food for the crew and band, etc.

A legit example, to me, of "BROKE" would likely be Jack Douglas' situation before getting sober. Rick Dufay has said that Jack's addiction and situation got so bad that Jack was essentially homeless and living on a mattress in a shooting gallery with other heroin addicts. That's the definition of "BROKE". I don't get the sense that any of the band members ever quite got to that point.

Edit Note: I'm largely working from memory with a lot of the above information, so it's possible I might have some facts or dates slightly off.

This books talks about how broke and real the financials got for Steven and Joe in the early 80s www.amazon.com.au/Walk-This-Way-Aerosmith-American-ebook/dp/B07DH82B7R

Sounds like in general they have tried to sugar coat those details over the las 30+ years, cant blame them.