Be disciplined with your budget so you have margin for the unexpected.

I have been extremely disciplined and driven throughout wrestling, working during college, and academics.

I have (and without the benefit of leverage), but the average investor will likely never reach those percentages, they might be lucky to get 8 to 12%, and that would require a level of discipline the average investor probably does not possess.I was able to do it mostly acquiring the highest quality growth stocks (e.g., Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, Microsoft, Google and a handful of very well managed REITs and other stocks like STOR and maybe MPW), and "most importantly" by buying very heavily into them during mass panic sell offs, either market general sell offs like the end of 2018, the COVID crash, or stock specific sell offs that can occur for any number of reasons. 

Stay disciplined.

You have to be disciplined when using a HELOC. 

@Nicholas Bossert congrats on your discipline and jumping into this with your eyes wide open.

There are two big caveats to that statement 1. you have the discipline to invest the money, and not spend it. if not, pay off the debt. 2.

Stay disciplined and try to learn something new every day. 

(only halfway kidding) Then think about how disciplined you both are at keeping your bookkeeping straight.

That’s a lot of why I walked away from this one.There are always more opportunities :) Need to stay disciplined.