Ok - Risk. I like it. Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.

So, how do you know what you are doing if you have never done it before? You have to take the risk and do it once in order to understand the full consequence of doing the project. Then the next time you repeat this project, there should in an ideal situation be no risk factor.

Risk is needed. Risk is good. Risk is fun.

The amount of risk that you take on needs to be determined. This is called calculated risk.

It is difficult to calculate risk properly. People generally have their own agendas and do not factor in risk properly. You don't always want a low-risk situation, and you don't always want a high-risk situation. You want to calculate how much risk that you can handle and go for it.

People who are contractors or own their own business live at a higher risk level than people who do the daily grind. This does not mean that when the market shrinks, they should be running around looking for that full-time permanent job. This may mean that they will have to dip into their savings for a bit and end up taking more vacation this year. If they don't have any savings, then they have been red-lining their risk and should have calculated their situation better.

They probably didn't know what they were doing, but next time the market dries up, they will have that safety net in place.