I had similar experience at 42, I was still married then. I took out a 30 year mortgage when that was all I could do to have a flat abroad, in addition to our mortgaged family home in UK, and mortgaged flat for rental in UK. It was all a big mistake, especially since our marriage then within two years went belly up, and guess who got the remaining equity (Not me!).
Anyhow I am not complaining, I feel more free now as a researcher having sunk the remaining capital I subsequently rustled up from well paid work contracting in the old system, back into the research I've now been doing for seven years on the global energy problem.
That money is all done now, and I am struggling to raise more by crowdfunding, or any other means, despite me doing this using my normally financially lucrative skills on the behalf everyone on the planet, on their / our behalfs.
But still I feel richer for knowing I contributed to the best cause we can possibly contribute, the cause of all of us.
Would be cool to carry on rather than be made homeless for my good intentions, but still it can't take away the satisfaction I feel regardless of outcome.
Its been the most valuable work I've ever done.
It occurs to me that we are all energy slaves until the doomed deadly destruction monetising live system of profit, our real slaver of all humanity in our known history, is slain.
All we need to do that is empower those who would slay it.
Funding, is empowerment, since money is energy always.
Fund everybody by financial stimulus indexed to solar, the only energy that can be used to create, reversing entropy, and the beast is slain.
That would be the end of it.
If I was to advise anyone what to invest in, it would be towards whatever you can see might lead to that.
The satisfaction you get from feeling like you delivered a blow to it is well worth the fallout if the blow is unsuccessful, every blow counts, and the more people seeing the satisfaction we get from trying, the more folk will have a go themselves. Sooner or later, somebody will hit the jackpot of ending it's run, the run of the profit monster, the eternal energy slaver will be ended, and life will take on a whole new dimension we never saw before - creation. The benefits from the latter are unlimited because they are funded by limitless energy which is the real thing of value.