I remember receiving similar advice (take student loans, invest in stocks) from my high school accounting teacher. If "call your parents and humbly beg for $25k" is a valid "plan of last resort", then it's a lot less risky.

A lot of people definitely should not try this. The levered gains quickly fall apart if you're not completely on top of deadlines for interest-free periods expiring and start owing 24.99%+ APY on five figure balances. If there's _any_ risk of that happening I'd stay the hell away from levered investments and reach for the automatic-monthly-credit-card-payments of Ramit Sethi's "I Will Teach You to be Rich".

Another risk is the hedonic treadmill -- if you're used to an elevated standard of living in your early 20s, it can be hard to get out of levered spending later in life. Probably would need to choose friends carefully, and budget meticulously.

But to the author's initial point -- I also do agree, in hindsight, that $25k of added consumption in my first years out of college would have materially made my life MUCH better -- a bit more travel/meals with friends that I "responsibly" chose to miss out on is not time that I will ever get back.