Financial Roulette Is borrowing from your IRA a healthy risk or a tragic mistake?

Courtney McCain, 25, is at once an unlikely and highly likelyentrepreneur. She's got half a college degree. She married anAir Force man and moved to a remote base in the Midwest. Afterbeing re-stationed on the East Coast, she separated from herhusband and moved nearer to family and friends, where she wentthrough a string of administrative assistant jobs. She excelled ateach job but was ultimately bored and burned out. Now an assistantaccount executive with a public relations firm, McCain is on adecidedly professional track.

Public relations might be her calling...but, then again, itmight not be. "I know that I've got the brains and thetalent to be a success," she says, "but it has to be onmy terms. My big challenge is to find out what it is that I'mgood at doing. Successful people aren't successful just becausethey're smart. I think they're successful becausethey've pursued things in which they have naturaltalent."

For McCain, what seems to come naturally is consumer sales. Andto test the waters, she's taken on a distributorship for MaryKay Cosmetics in addition to her 9-to-5 routine. There are fewdownsides. Besides, if this is her true calling, or at leasta calling, there's a lot of upside potential.