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I've never really gambled; I've bought two lottery tickets my entire life, I've spent less than $10 at casinos, and I don't like sports so never bothered with s

I've never really gambled; I've bought two lottery tickets my entire life, I've spent less than $10 at casinos, and I don't like sports so never bothered with sports betting. I did buy some crypto during the hype in 2021, but that's basically the extent of it, and I never got into "debt" or anything with it. I do buy stock, but it's almost exclusively ETFs pegged to the S&P500 or something, not exactly a huge risk. It's easy for me to sit here with righteous indignation, acting like I'm super smart for not blowing my money on gambling, and for a long time I did just that, but recently I've kind of realized that my cowardice towards losing money is also why I'll never be wealthy. I gravitate towards decent-but-not-amazing-paying W2 jobs. I like them fine, I'm comfortable enough, and that's the safe, nearly-zero-risk path. It's certainly not a bad life or anything, but you also do kind of top-out fairly early. By age 27, I was a senior engineer at Apple. I didn't really have any intention of becoming a manager, so I was only like two promotions away from seemingly maxing out my career. I absolutely hated my job, and it depressed me because it felt like this was the end goal, and I was miserable; there was no more substantial path "upwards", and the top was just not a place I was happy. If I weren't such a coward, and had a higher tolerance for risk, I almost certainly would have started a real business. Starting a business is basically a fancy gamble; most businesses don't succeed. It's kind of hard for me to condemn gamblers at that point.

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1_1xdev1 3y ago
Equating starting a business with gambling in a casino is asinine. You have a lot more impact as a founder over whether that business succeeds than you would ever have over a wager in roulette or a 4 game NFL parlay on Sunday. Both are risks. Only one is a gamble.
- tombert 3y ago
  I don't know that I made my point as clear as I should, but what I was saying is that starting a business does require a mindset that is more tolerant to risk. I do think that there's a bit of overlap in that part of the mentality of people who gamble and people who start businesses. You have to accept that there's a good chunk of luck with starting a business, and also acknowledge that if you don't have that luck that the business will likely go belly-up. What I was getting at is I am personally a coward. I don't say this with pride, and this isn't some attempt at humble-bragging or anything, it's a dig at myself, not entrepreneurs. Sometimes being a coward isn't a bad thing, if nothing else I don't waste my money at casinos, so that's good. But because I'm so terrified of losing money, and so terrified of anything involving "risk", I feel like I took the cowards way out by working for BigCos at a desk job instead of trying to build my own thing. Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the people who can throw caution to the wind.

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1_1xdev1 3y ago

Equating starting a business with gambling in a casino is asinine. You have a lot more impact as a founder over whether that business succeeds than you would ever have over a wager in roulette or a 4 game NFL parlay on Sunday. Both are risks. Only one is a gamble.

tombert 3y ago
I don't know that I made my point as clear as I should, but what I was saying is that starting a business does require a mindset that is more tolerant to risk. I do think that there's a bit of overlap in that part of the mentality of people who gamble and people who start businesses. You have to accept that there's a good chunk of luck with starting a business, and also acknowledge that if you don't have that luck that the business will likely go belly-up. What I was getting at is I am personally a coward. I don't say this with pride, and this isn't some attempt at humble-bragging or anything, it's a dig at myself, not entrepreneurs. Sometimes being a coward isn't a bad thing, if nothing else I don't waste my money at casinos, so that's good. But because I'm so terrified of losing money, and so terrified of anything involving "risk", I feel like I took the cowards way out by working for BigCos at a desk job instead of trying to build my own thing. Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the people who can throw caution to the wind.