Remind me of a old child tricky question: "1 million now, or a penny that doubles each day during next 30 days". Many would choose a million right now, while a penny option is much profitable. Some people might calculate and chose a penny option, but imagine what a trader could do in 30 days if he has a 1 million to spend.
Financial education is preferable imho, but what about the situation, when it will takes an experienced person with financial education years to earn his first million, while other person can multiply that million when first person is still earning it?
That second question is the important one. One penny per day that doubles everyday for 30 days is over 5.5 million dollars, so if you are doing that for 30 days then I will be able to wait for 30 days and that's fine. But, if you asked me 1 million today or 5.5 million in 10 years?
I would say 1 million today because I can make that into 10 million and more in 10 years anyway. Not just trader but even long term investor could do that and that is why it's so important. People need to realize that we are at a breaking point in the crypto world where it could go up, so if you give me a million dollars today, I would simply put that in top bitcoin and even in the shot 2 year term I could make more than double that easily, probably a lot more. So always pick the million today, makes more sense.
I understand that people are not realizing the number, but at the same time that timeframe is the difference maker. In OP's question nothing is guaranteed, I mean think about it, you learn a lot about finance and that means you could make a lot of money but it also means that you may not make any money at all, aren't there any poor traders in the world? I am sure there must be and that's the key part.
I believe that we need to focus on that a lot more, we could make a lot more, but we could fail as well so we should focus on what we can do instead, that would be a lot better. I personally hope that the best thing to do is 1 million dollars, at least for me, just get that and no other money is needed, you can live with that as easy as you could hope for.
You do have a point since having financial education and awareness doesn't mean you are already insured to earn money by the next day. Sometimes having financial education is only a starting point since there are also factors that may greatly affect you like creativity and ability to utilize your resources. Having money is good but it will only took a few minutes for it to be gone if you are not careful, a million dollar nowadays is nothing specially if you don't know where to spend it. If I have a chance to be given that amount I wouldn't spend it immediately but instead i'd like to learn a thing or two before using it.