Stop wearing your poverty like a badge of honor. We have romanticized "bootstrapping" - eating ramen and sleeping on the floor - as the noble path to success. I call it Financial Masochism. The Titans like Phil Knight and Elon Musk didn't save their way to the top; they leveraged debt to buy speed. In an inflationary economy, holding cash is a tax, and borrowing at 0% is an arbitrage. Stop trying to be a martyr with your own money. Become a mercenary with the bank's money. He