[DesertCat]

In thinking more about this thread I'm wondering if my advice was way too risk adverse for Degen.

I quit college before finishing to work at a software startup that was near bankruptcy for the first year. Fiver years later I quit the best paying job I ever had to co-found a software company with a friend. In the first case I didn't get rich, at least financially, but what I learned was priceless. In the second case we (after many years of wonderfully hard work) sold the company for enough to allow me to become a full time investor.

So I'm a big believer that the one of the best routes to riches (or at least comfortable laziness in my case) is starting a business. That's taking risk. Though I had little to risk in both cases. In the first I was broke. In the second, I knew I could get a good job if we failed, and was only investing sweat equity.

If you want to put a couple years of savings into a business you truly believe in, go for it. Do your research of course. And if it fails, you are only two years behind and probably learned something valuable.

But if you've built a big nest egg, that's a guarantee of a signficant and growing income stream for the rest of your life. If you protect it. Start a business if you want, but try not to put your entire life savings in it. Scrimp and get by until the business starts generating income.

My friend's failure is that he always viewed business as a roulette wheel, you take big risks for big rewards. That's great when you have little to lose. But once he got rich, he still wanted to be richer, and was too impatient to change his ways. He ended up putting it all down on red, and spun that wheel one time too many.