That depends also on opportunity cost though. Buffett by his own admission just really enjoys the "game" (to him) of reading earnings reports and finding good companies to invest in. He sees no problem spending 40 hours per week of doing that, it's more like a hobby at this point.

For people with $10k or less total invested, unless they also just really enjoy reading financial reports, spending their 40 hours per week on some sort of work or education is likely to have a much higher expected value than $1k.