Maybe you do, maybe you don't; it depends on what assets the money has been invested in. I doubt someone who chooses to pursue this kind of path keeps it as mattress cash.

what's the argument here? investing has risks?

That it would, in fact, suck to go from 670/yr to 0 - unemployment.

Not necessarily. Since my wife and I married 8 years ago, we’ve never spent more that 40% of our combined income annually.

I haven’t had consistent income for almost 9 months now as I am attempting to transition from a blue collar lifestyle (carpenter and electrician) to become a web developer.

I wrote my first html and qbasic code back in the 90s but I always told myself that I could never be anything other than a tradesmen because of my upbringing.

Now I’m looking to change that and it’s only possible because we’ve been so frugal.

Seems about 3x less certain than someone with one job going from 200k to 0

Going to 0 always sucks