A few years ago, I had a colleague who would show off his investment returns in the office every day—earning over a thousand a day.

Watching those numbers go up, he became more and more arrogant, and eventually, he put all of his elderly parents’ lifelong savings—several million—into it. He kept telling us it was “easy money” and that he was going to retire early.

So what happened? The platform collapsed.

After that, when we saw him again, it was like he was a different person. The guy who used to greet everyone with a smile and talk about his earnings was completely gone. In the office, he always kept his head down, didn’t speak, and there was a vacant look in his eyes.

Behind high returns is high risk—you hear this a thousand times, but when it actually happens to you, it’s already too late. That retirement money, every cent of it was painstakingly saved by his parents for their old age.