I agree with you, almost 100%. About 15 years ago I saw that I wasn't going to reach my goal for early retirement. So I leveraged everything I could and bought stocks, lots of stock. Stocks were low at the time. Plus I bought a lot of real estate. At one time I was almost $1,000,000 in debt. It was a huge gamble but for me it paid off big time. I wouldn't recommend anyone doing what I did. I didn't tell my wife what I was doing either. In a couple of years I was debt free, paid the ranch off, built the house, barn and everything else, plus retired early and lived off investment interest for the last 7 years.