Instead of bulking it up in that amount I would divide into months/weeks/days/hours.
Making the goal more manageable in your conscious mind is probably the first step. I.E 2500/mth, 625/week, 89.30/day, 8.92/hr at 10 hr days.
So this is actually very probable when considering it and it's just as unlikely given your view of it.
If you went a played 3-6 limit - you could accomplish this by playing tight and doing some table selection at your local casino (OBVIOUSLY NOT FULL PROOF), this would be better than NL because of the diminished variance.
This entire thing of course is disclosing your monthly living expenses - that would come into play as well but if you can live on a tight budget you could probably still pull it off. Again I'm being very positive. I.E Would you tilt off your money/Are you proficient enough to win 3BB per hour after rake? etc.
If you aren't good enough spend a little of it on a coach, and have them work with you on attaining your goal.
Last words, make the goal greater than what is necessary. I.E if you need 10 k by 4 months, why not dream bigger and work harder for 15 or 20? It's a lot easier to score 80-90% on an exam than 100%, so with a bigger goal more can be accomplished.
AGAIN. This is very positive. But I think anyone can do it with the right attitude.
This is a more important question than has been acknowledged. Generally speaking, I'd say the best thing you could do in this situation is give your friend the $4k now, by June give him another $2k that you managed to save a few hundred bucks at a time, and tell him "that's the best I can do - sorry".
Him getting about half his money back is a pretty ok outcome as compared to the alternative of letting you try to run it up and him maybe ending up with nothing.
