Relying the situation to motivate you seems... um... very risky and not quite strategic.
I noticed that some people weren't born to become Jason Calacanis, Zuck, Gates, Hsieh. For these type of people, they have to play a bit safe or else they will regret their choices by cutting the oxygen lifeline and hoping by 1 year things will pick up.
Let me rephrase that: following your 1,2,3,4 steps, 10 years from now he'll probably end up either jobless, have less money in the bank, or even in less favorable situation (working for less money, worse jobs, etc).
We're using the same assumption correct? that either consulting or the product were not successful.
One gig is definitely not enough. Consultant needs to build portfolio in order to get more gigs so that they can rely less from their networks. That is to assume the OP have a pretty good connections that could help him land few gigs.
People always said that "make sure you have X-months worth of saving".
People say the following phrase quite often as well: "money is not a problem". I'll add one word to that phrase... "...yet". Money is not a problem yet (so far).
Once you started to realize that money becomes an issue, your mind will have hard time to focus and concentrate. From that point onward, whatever you'll do won't be optimal.
To sum up my advise: make sure you have a fixed stable income. Once that's taken care of, your mind will have more capacity and effort to focus on something else.