From one middle-aged white guy with a functional family not in poverty and "made it" to a younger version of me - we got very lucky. I'm happy it looks like you're doing fine, but hedging your bets is a smarter plan, statistically.

I've taken a lot of risks in my life, but I always have a "Plan B" if the risk is large. A huge number of people don't have the means for a "Plan B" and when shit goes south they end up on the street.

Bill Gates (to use your example) is definitely not smarter than the aveage person. But he was not at Harvard on scholarship for underprivileged youth. His grandfather was a millionaire lawyer, his father followed in his footsteps, and Bill was going to follow that path as well. But Bill's mom was good friends with the guy on the board of directors at IBM who made the decision which firm would get the exclusive contract to develop the IBM disk operating system (DOS). You can count on two hands the number of people in the world "have what it takes" in that situation.