lets hear some examples, honestly please list if u dont mind.

Anything in the trades. You probably would have to apprentice for a couple of years but you can chalk that up to education. There're a lot of people who work as freelance software / website developers, there're people doing home reno/contracting and advertising through craigslist/kijiji - a lot of them have websites or portals that log customer reviews and as they build their reputation, business picks up and they're able to charge higher prices. Real estate agents these days don't really need to pay their dues at brokerages that work them to the bone - there're tons of discount brokerages that give you a lot of freedom. Real estate appraiser is another one - once you're licensed you basically choose from jobs out of a database at your leisure. Anything sales related has the potential for giving you freedom... especially it's a purely commission based compensation plan.

I'm guessing some kind of contractor that can work from home on a computer. Meanwhile all the contractors that I've worked with, known, related to all had to keep normal hours for the most part.

software troubleshooter can work remotely
manufacturers rep (sales)
graphic designer
comp. programmers obv.
photographer

There are tons of off-site type jobs. Of course NONE of them are turn-key.... (get a degree then throw out a shingle). You have to earn a reputation before being successful on-your-own time frame.

(One of my jobs is doing "the books" for a coupla businesses. I can do this at midnight if I choose.)

What's a good job for a 40-something person with no college degree and no resume who would be a horrible salesman and has physical limitations that are unsuitable for jobs requiring manual labor or good eye-hand coordination?

politician

Software developer or translator. If you have the skills you probably can get a job in the field without a college degree.

Have a degree in the first. I like computers and writing software but it sucks on a full time basis. Remotely most good work is through existing contacts otherwise you are competing on price with Indians.

Don't have a degree in the second but tons of flexible work available. Pay is by the word. You get faster with experience (you less often need to stop to do detective work on a word) so the hourly goes up. My second language of Slovak (learned as an adult) is important enough that its ranked circa no. 30 in terms of number of wikipedia pages but even that has few English/American people who can read it, understand it and write good English that means the same thing as the original Slovak text (you normally only translate into your own language and while native speakers of the other language may sometimes try to translate the other way "against the wind", they can't compete with you in terms of the quality of the resulting text). Translating is also good alongside poker as you can just do it the times of the week/day when the games aren't good.

So the moral is:
1 Turn off the computer, go abroad,
2 Chase local girls till you find one to teach you her language on a live in basis,
3 Make kids to cover the Darwinian success criteria.
4 Translate
5 Play poker on the side
6 Profit.

That's pretty much what I did and I'd recommend it to others.

cliffs from thread:

- old people want security
- corporations give security, so get job at corporation.
- running own business is more secure than poker
- playing poker and running own business have no correlation
- my friends have jobs and are happy and i'm not
- bots, tough games and poker is dead etc
- health insurance and security

this has to be the nut worst pool of people in one thread. if anyone is aspiring, do your thing, work hard, manage money, invest well and enjoy the journey. security is just made up so people waste their lives working for someone else. which is completely fine if that's what YOU want but it seems mid-age people have it ingrained in their head that the world does not progress and industries don't change. the moment your company can save $$ is the moment your security fantasy is up.

its not about the destination - its about the journey

There are masses of remote worker freelancers in multiple fields and many online platforms where their services are sold. I've often outsourced to freelancers.

Main service categories are: Admin, Business Support, Design, Marketing & PR, Social Media, Software/Web Development, Translation, Video/Photo/Audio/Animation, and writing.

Freelancer competition on price is with India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, however for the buyer it's sometimes a false economy, not through standard of work but through communication/language problems and the time difference.

So European/North American freelancers get their fair share of the pie.

I see this style of working/hiring growing fast and becoming a significant chunk of the work force.

lol what "journey" are you talking about it? You aren't talking about a journey, you're talking about a literal nightmare. I know there are some guys who claim they play poker 9-5 M-F... they are either full of **** or running extremely hot (which always ends at some point). There is no question you will have to play weekends, evenings, graveyard and holidays if you're going to be "successful".... even without kids this puts serious strain on a relationship... and if you do have kids then you're pretty much an absentee parent/ miss out on your kids lives...

yeah there are millions and millions of families who have normal ****ty jobs that never get to spend time/ be there... and they sort of make it work... but they don't have a choice... for someone to willingly choose that style of life is crazy.

the "journey" of enjoying the present and following what you enjoy rather than buying into predefined life model that assumes you will live forever. success means different things to different people but anyone passionate about anything is working a lot longer than 9-5 to achieve whatever they have set out.

there are games 24/7 online and depending where you are, live. depending on your skill level and what your earning expectations are will dictate your hours and how balanced your life can be, this is something the individual needs to ask themselves when diving in. i get poker might not be the greatest long-term career but neither is a lot of today's jobs. let people aspire instead of rambling about how terrible you perceive it to be, it's your opinion.

The thread is asking for the opinions of late 30 and 40 something grinders. So if the old guys want to ramble about how bad of idea it is thats the purpose of the thread. A 20 something kid like yourself is going to have a completely diff view on it then somebodys whos been grinding for 10+ years and is going to be thinking of things like retirement, health insurance, and supporting a family.

You must be pretty young or really spoiled. Everyone has dreams, and being young and chasing those dreams and enjoying the struggle or "journey" as you say it is nothing more than a phase that literally everyone goes through. Most get that out of their system during college / early 20's. Then you eventually realize struggling ****ing sucks and that there's more to life than a silly "job" or passion.

theres nothing heavier than realizing you can't get back the precious years you wasted doing X, especially after everyone told you how stupid it was (and they were right), how ****ed your current situation is, and how comfy your peers are from following the safe, cush, boring path.

its funny how time changes our perspective of things. eventually you will understand how stupid and ignorant taking huge risk/ little reward styles of life is...

Life isn't just about picking one career and sticking with the same old job through your 60s though. The trend is that everyone goes through different periods where they carve out different niches throughout their life, and you have to pick and choose which ones seem like a good investment of your time. Sometimes the better choices are the ones that require more of an up front sacrifice.

I wouldn't even put job security on the top 5 list of reasons that playing poker for a living sucks.

That adam guy apparently thinks that making $60/h at 2/5nl is realistic. In a world where that's sustainable maybe it would be a more interesting proposition.

fair point

young not spoiled, grew up poor, i get what struggling is. we are going to agree to disagree here. you can still have a regular job and struggle, life variance is real, anything can happen at any moment. me and you will both be dead soon in this blimp of time that we are lucky enough to experience together.

thinking about your next play before you even see your hole cards seems counter-intuitive both in life and poker.

i know adam from study groups and everything he said is correct. i played a lot live and know a lot of grinders hovering around that at 2/5 and these are mediocre grinders.

Thinking about your next play should be a staple with a grinder in any profession. Thinking about your next 100k moves is standard in poker.

You were tracking their results over 1,000+ hours of play?

There may be a small number of people legitimately making that in some remote casino that has a loyal group of degenerate gamblers. For ever one of those there're dozens of delusional people who're running hot.

The great thing about live poker is that there's no way to actually verify their results. People can lie to the world, and even to themselves for years on end.

MrSpew, going full blown nihilist nothing matters is a pretty weak retort. You came into this thread blasting at how pathetic everyone in here is because they don't adhere to your juvenile outlook on poker and life. As if several people who have posted ITT haven't been where you are before and have likely put up much better winrates then whatever you put up in today's climate. Anything I write you can counter with some sarcastic drivel so I will leave it at that.

it was an analogy, not sure what you mean about bolded part though.

true, people fake results but those winrates are still attainable. maybe in a different country its completely different so no point arguing here because i have'nt played everywhere.

Its unfortunate youve missed the point of my posts, im in no way a nihilist. this thread is pathetic, if i were aspiring to do anything id be deterred from such negative and bleak outlooks on life. its interesting how many people on this forum **** on poker players but then get all defensive when people question their pathway.

no idea what my winrate has got to do with anything as well...

I am in my mid-30's with a wife and two kids, and I think most people in my situation would like to have something else than poker as their main income, unless they are in the 1% (or less) of players that can earn huge amounts of money on a regular basis, compared to doing something else.

If you value freedom, there are plenty of ways to make a living without the 9-5 grind, especially in the globalised, service-based online economy of the modern world. Of course, once you get kids your freedom gets severely limited anyway (in a good way, I would like to add) and it is easier to fit normal child-raising in a 9-5 than playing poker, due to our society being based around 9-5.

Also a very important aspect is the potential earnings vs cost of living and average salary. I live in a country where the average monthly salary is something like 700 EUR after taxes. If you are working a dead-end job, making average or even less, but are good at poker, the threshold to becoming a pro or at least having a large part of your income come from poker is much lower, since you do not need to play so high stakes to earn more than you would from a "regular" job.

But even then, a very important aspect that makes being a poker pro massively harder, at least when family and kids come into the picture, is not having an income that the banks will count when applying for a loan. In most countries, buying an apartment or a house is much cheaper than renting (and also +EV in the long run, since when you have paid the loan off, you actually own something of value), but if you earn your money from poker, banks will tell you to **** off which limits your options long-term. Same goes for getting a new car etc.

I think a lot of the viewpoints are fairly biased. If you ran hot in MTT's a few years ago and got found out eventually, you haven't seen the full picture. As an online cash player, right now it's still pretty good. Money is decent but not what it was, working hours are very flexible and you get to be your own boss. Problem is how long that will continue. Important to have an exit strategy lined up and invest well.

I can't speak much for live but variance must be massive due to how few hands you get in an hour and would be very difficult to gauge your winrate. Similar scenario with MTT's.

I am 51. I have been a perfessional gambooler since the age of 26.

Then why not pull an even bigger number out of your ass and pretend that it MIGHT be possible? Why not $200/h at 2/5nl? It IS theoretically possible!

I'd much sooner believe an hourly of $60 for someone grinding $100nl online (and it's still probably on the high end in 2017).

For it to be worth the sacrifices you really have to be banking on yourself being able to compete in higher stakes games where there's a high probability of failure even for people who do have a strong work ethic. It's possible to be cranking out $150/h grinding 2/4nl, that i agree. That's why i said that there's a higher ceiling for earnings than most career paths. The question is whether you want to invest years of your life and accept all the other negatives to see if you can be one of the few people who hit that plateau (and hope that it still exists by the time you're ready to do it).