Yes. It is understandable that an inflated ego would attempt to speedrun this section of civilization development, but you still have to follow the research list by priority, and colonization of near neighbors is quite far down that list. You're supposed to do good and widely benevolent things to build a positive and charismatic aura that attracts a social circle of best of the best savant A.I. programmers to believe in your cause, then combine the power of your money with their genius so that they can finish the quantum-photonic neural networks that will boost the research speed of the scientists that are researching disease cures. Combining them together extends the lifespan of all other engineers across the planet, exponentially amplifying all those industries as well, and begins to establish a sustainable interest in colonization of the cosmos in your brothers and sisters, if done right culminating in a civilization wide golden age, perhaps even a diamond age. Started from the bottom now we here.

TL;DR: The real wealth race is whoever develops the first self replicating asteroid mining bot to begin consuming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche