Without education onlinepoker is still probably one of the easiest way to make money.

Except for literally dozens of other things.

Something to think about is that the money and happiness relationship offers diminishing returns. Consider your happiness in each of the following annual income categories:

0-20k
20-40k
40-60k
60-80k
80-100k
100-200k
200-300k
300-400k

The jump from being homeless and making nothing to having 20k would mark a substantial increase in happiness. Then the jump from 20k to 40k would also substantially improve your standard of living and happiness but not as much as the first 20k you made.

Similarly all the way up the ladder as your annual income increases the happiness you get from it decreases. It gets to the point where making 200k or 300k makes almost no difference in how happy you are.

One way to think about it is each new dollar you earn is less "valuable" than the last dollar you earned.

You mentioned you were passionate about gaining money so I just wanted to help provide some context in regards to money and happiness. I do agree that money indeed can buy happiness but we just need to realize money is limited in what it offers us. Having a family and friends complete with a balanced lifestyle becomes more important once you get to the 60-80k range IMO.

Your age and number of years you've waited is what determines this. If you believe that the market has a tendency to move up over time and you are constantly investing in the market through periodic pass investments (401k), you actually want the market to go down for a while, not up.

We are currently in an environment that isn't normal, and it's skewing the way people think. I think much of the reason you are talking the way you are is because all you see is the good side of investing. Anyone can do well in this market, just keep putting your money in. It's been going up for 9 years. If you can't make money in the last 9 years you're essentially a moron.

You'd think a lot differently if we went through a few up and down cycles in the last 9 years.

For most people in the United States who are hardworking and decently intelligent (and I'd say hardworking is more important of the two), getting a degree in one of the valuable fields is well worth it. Engineering/finance/econ/math etc. Over a 40 year working career it'll pay for itself and open doors to many opportunities that simply won't be there if you don't get a degree. That path is hard if you have to work while doing it, but you don't have to go full time, and if it takes you 6-7 years to complete it, or summer classes, it's still worth it in my opinion.

Unless you have a specific reason to not go to college, I'd go to college.

Anyone not in the top 1% of whatever it is they think they are good at are in this category, basically. It doesn't mean you aren't good at it, but to be really great at something is borderline impossible. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve, though. A lot of success can come from just being competent at things.

The path to happiness and success in the United States right now for most people is securing a decent income (education/job), spending less than you make (so that you can save and invest and grow your assets), cultivating and maintaining personal relationships (maybe the most important factor), and don't have children out of wedlock. If you follow those general rules, which assumes you are willing to work, it's actually hard to screw life up.

Becoming really good at something means pushing way past diminishing returns as well. It comes with real risk of pot commitment. I would do an awful lot to get the years I wasted on poker and college back for sure.

You're chasing random crap people post and promote online. Long shots that work for 1 in 10,000. You are only listening to unusual stories of people who got rich in unusual ways - don't expect it to work for you. Ask yourself - why are they talking about their golden goose instead of scaling their strategy?

Every Bitcoin millionaire now thinks they are geniuses - plus they have a self interest in pumping up Bitcoin. But how often do you hear from those who lost tons of money in altcoins or shady exchanges/etc? You need to weight success stories against risk and future opportunity in a more analytical way.

Your goal is not complicated - but also not easy. Who gets wealthy in the USA? The breakdown of people who have 1M+ net worth is pretty simple:

• real estate (often their primary residence in a now wealthy area) - this is the only way a person can control a very expensive asset and benefit from its appreciation while putting down very little actual money. And you get to live in it.
• High paying professionals - doctors, lawyers, engineers. They can save and invest enough money to get to that 1M mark in a reasonable time frame.
• College grads - despite random fluff from from Silicon Valley, there is a HUGE discrepancy in average lifetime earnings for college grads and non-grads. Special snowflakes aside, you simply get better jobs and better opportunities with a degree. Is it expensive? Maybe if you're dumb and borrow 100K to get a degree in Theater. But while colleges have high MSRP they also have huge financial aid packages. If your parents are not wealthy, chances are that you will get tons of grant money and not have that much in loans, either. Forget MSRP and figure out how to use Financial Aid office to your advantage.
• Business owners - actual business where you sell a product or service in real life or online.

Stock market speculation is a dead end. Those who make fees off of you get rich - not you. Keep it simple. Vanguard and ETFs and normal portfolio.

Once you have the basics down, feel free to set aside some money to speculate. Take 1-5% and feel free to throw caution and common sense to the wind and speculate on RandomCoin/etc.

Luck, speculation, investing - they all play a role in getting to 1M. It's a question of risk of ruin and goals.

Bored, if an opportunity came up in the future that would fill your financial and personal needs, but required a college degree in order to be considered, would you change this view about the time you "wasted" in college?

I don't think a college education is a waste unless you either 1) never used it in any meaningful way in order to secure employment, or 2) studied subjects like gender studies or psychology, which are essentially useless in the working world.

To be fair to him, he's almost assuredly very young and inexperienced, so his position on what is a "good" income is warped, along with a very skewed perception of normal stock market returns.

He's most likely a person who just started working in the last few years and invested his money into a bull market that knows no bounds and thinks that's the key to life. Older people with more experience know that good and bad times are ahead and the best you can hope for is to be slightly better than average when it comes to both.

When you are, say, 20 years old his view of the world is actually understandable, especially so in this particular environment. The state of the world when you come of age shapes your worldview until it gets upended. When the market crashes 40% or inflation becomes a real factor or your country goes to war I'm sure he will adjust. One day he'll be 35 years old and he'll look back on these thoughts and be slightly (or very) embarrassed.

Don't we all?

I'm in bucket 1 and it's turned into a full blown career. I'm definitely aiming to get rich through the 'own a business' route.

I fully understand that, but didn't going to college give you any skills to help you do that?

Nope. But I went back when older. I can honestly say that I learned almost nothing new about economics getting a degree in economics.

Fair enough, I believe you. My experience was different, many of the things I learned in college didn't register until years later when it would pop up. More theoretical stuff. I hated every second of college but I'm glad I finished it.

Hey OP,

Your story was my story. Except I'm not particularly stingy (I wish I was more so). From 13-20 I was trying every possible scheme I could to make money, most didn't work, a few worked inconsistently, a few didn't work just because I sucked.

EDIT AFTER WRITING: This ends up reading to me like a "listen to how cool I am." I'm too lazy in this case to edit it to not be that way. I hope my story helps.

Honestly, I read your whole post, I think I have a good sense of where you're at, and so I'm going to say things just to you that I wouldn't say to someone else, because we're friends now.

Screw college. With your self-awareness, hustler mentality, and ability to self study, you'd serve the overall economy of the world better in an entrepreneurial capacity.

This is like that scene in Blow where the one dude tells Johnny Depp's character that he had the wrong dream (grass instead of coke).

If there is money to be made in Twitter follower churning, link sharing, or any other spam activity, that money is all going to go to India or Bangladesh. You failed at it, which is good, you should have failed at it. Imagine how much your life would suck if you'd found a way to succeed at that and made a few thousand dollars per month as a spammer for a period of time. You'd probably be trapped into doing that for life, and you'd suck as a person.

I suspect you've read enough to have heard the "find a way to add value" speech put every possible way. So I'd just say that trying to grind in a way that's not adding value to other people sucks. All of the real money is on the other side of adding value.

I'd be spending your time learning how to do things that small business owners want to know how to do but don't have the time to learn themselves.

I spend almost all of my work time (and have for the past 7 years) trying to come up with ways to help other people to make money. I do the creative work that other people don't want to do.

I study (self-study) an extremely wide field. I'm modestly competent with code (javascript et. al, python). I understand core programming concepts quite well, so I could learn other languages in a few weeks if needed. I learned this not because I want to be a programmer, but because I wanted to be able to work effectively WITH programmers (as programmers are the future of basically everything). I understand how programmers think about problems, what it's like to do their work, what things annoy them.

I'm fairly competent with most of the Adobe Creative Cloud. I can edit videos quickly in Premiere Pro. I can do most standard things on Photoshop. I can edit audio in Audition. I can use Experience Design to wireframe a concept.

For me, those two really obvious and easy to acquire skillsets (just sign up for Pluralsight) expanded my capabilities a lot. Now I can do a lot of things myself that I would have had to hire someone to do in the past. And while it's often **** that people from Fiverr could do, the time it takes to initiate that is significant, when it takes me 2.5 minutes to open one of the apps and do it myself.

You should be like me, is what I guess I'm saying. Learn, Do. If you got good at spamming, find real small businesses, and help them with lead gen. Apply skillsets to things that actually matter, and you'll make money.

You could become a real estate agent. Or you could understand what a real estate agent business looks like from top to bottom, and solve problems for them. Figure out ways to make their work lives easier, happier, cooler.

Focus on the arbitrage of what you know and real world businesses. I mean, figure out how to use what you know to make money from businesses. If you can't, you suck, and maybe you should pack it in and go to school (try to get a degree that allows you to make enough money for a therapist, you're going to need one). I'd probably try and intern for free at a small business that makes money first. In my early days, I did this a lot, and it was the most valuable experience I gained. If you can get paid for it that's a plus I guess, but I'd take a free internship for a few months with the A-list entrepreneur versus a $15/hr office admin gig with a mediocre company.

The arbitrage question becomes self reinforcing. If you can't make money doing it, what you know isn't valuable, this is your key to learn more valuable things.

The ability to be pretty good at a lot of things is a superpower. If you'll take the time to become pretty good at the commerce part. We're all operating at a maximum of 80% efficiency, and the people at 80% are superstars. I'm talking about businesses. But we spend most of our time obsessing over the other 20%. How to solve those problems (and as we learn how to, new problems crop up, keeping us at 80%). Figure out previously unrealized stuff for the 20% and you'll receive a lot of warm welcomes from people (and open wallets).

The first real internship I did was at a real estate agency (focusing on investments) it was falling apart (Michigan, 2008-2009). We were pretty cutting edge at the time using Craigslist > Squeeze Page to generate leads and then calling them on the phone to set appointments. And having like actual metrics and stuff. We designed a presentation where we went to other real estate offices in the area and showed them exactly what we were doing. Step by step, every piece, no secrets. The pitch was, "you can do all of that, it's pretty simple, but we're good at doing it, if you want us to setup the system for you and teach you how to, it's $500."

People actually clapped at some of my sales presentations and we closed a handful of deals that summer. Those presentations actually led to a joint venture between the company I was at and one of the high volume agencies in the area where we'd do all of the online promotion for them and they'd pay a $500 referral on every deal that closed from the leads. I'd be gone before any of that money rolled in of course. And as an unpaid intern, I didn't get any of the money from the sales being closed. I actually never made any money from any of that directly.

I leaned:

• Lead follow-up (how to talk on the phone and qualiy prospects).
• Cold calling (to other real estate agencies to pitch them on our presentation and set an appointment).
• How to create a compelling sales presentation for a professional setting.
• How to deliver a compelling sales presentation in a professional setting, in front of a group.
• How to do 2007-2008 style internet marketing (I remembered how to do this for way too long).
• Everything else, too.

I learned how to work in an office. How to talk to professionals. How to use spreadsheets. But once I'd learned what there was to learn, I quit and moved on to do my own thing.

My own thing has gone well. Mic drop.

Saying "mic drop" at the end of your own post without any sense of irony has to be the cringiest thing I've seen here.

You haven't been here very long. Wait a little while. Someone tell this guy about steelhouse.

steelhouse was a great man, just misunderstood imo. I wish I could claim he was my gimmick account.

Try reading the whole post again. There was irony there, even if it was a bit sloppy.

I guess. The last few years I went from 'this guy is a brilliant troll' to 'this guy is obviously profoundly mentally ill' and that meant he made me sad.

If you want to see real cringe just read any post in the politics forum.

So much to respond to. About to tl;dr within a tl:dr, Inception-style

Always good to see a pay increase, just understand that it's entry-level pay in a lot of areas, outside of McJobs.

So am I and there's nothing wrong with this. The little things add up to a lot over time.

Your time is worth something and ime, if money is your focus, there are easier ways to make it today.

Forget all of this low-rent nonsense. First of all, a zillion people are doing that, second, many will do it for far less than you will. Third these types of income streams can evaporate very quickly due to things beyond your control. Twitter closing down your accounts, YouTube changing compensation amounts, eBay changing fees, etc.

It's not all that bad. Sucks is getting drafted, or having to work a farm until sundown every day. Sure there are other things you'd rather be doing, but then again there's a reason they call it work.

Well if you're working longer and aren't salaried you should be getting OT, and if too short then you don't really have a full-time job. Time is definitely part of the trade-off.

Not sure what you mean. In most jobs you're paid an agreed-on amount, yes, but likewise your employer won't just arbitrarily pay you half as much either. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

I don't know you beyond your post, but that gives me a lot of reason to question how true this is

It happens and it's always going to happen. Still there's always demand for competent, effective people that can be counted on. Some employers are better at recognizing and rewarding it than others. If yours isn't one then sometimes you have to move on.

Well that's good, at least. Being able to handle yourself and show some resilience are definitely two things employers tend to look at when they have an opening for something better.

Getting a ROI from investing is always nice, but I'd definitely caution against overconfidence in your long-term returns and your abilities. The market has been on a tear.

I'd get a firmer handle on what you have.

It doesn't really work like that.

At your income level there's a little more to think about. Other things equal, sure, the less income being eroded away by taxes the more favorable it is for you.

Econ 101-level thinking here, but yes it's generally desirable to at least hedge against inflation and not store your life savings in a low-yield bank account. Where to put those savings is the question that keeps everyone busy.

That's a good result, but allow for the possibility that your process could be terrible. The thing about a strong market--any market whether we're talking stocks, real estate, whatever--is that it can be very forgiving of mistakes, or can obscure them completely. Over time you're going to see some serious setbacks too.

Sure, you could, a lot of people could.. Just as they could write a novel, or learn a new language, or quit smoking. Whether something can be done is rarely the question.

You could take that approach, many people do, but it's really just cutting corners.

Side note on this - you'll find over time that more and more of your opportunities will come by way of your personal network, and that's something to think about.

I've stumbled across these college discussions a lot lately and have seen a lot of talk about how degrees are perceived, and it's probably being blown a little out of proportion. My experience, most people gain a fairly reasonable view of what a degree is and isn't just working in a professional environment for a year or two. Most of the exceptions seem to be either new grads with no world experience, older folks, or anti-establishment knuckleheads who think the world is why they're still working **** jobs at 30.

Time's going to keep right on ticking regardless of what you do.

You don't say! So at least triple your current income? Yeah I bet you are hoping for that.

Seriously, what are you looking for here? Do you want anecdotal tales of easy money? Discussions on what a good plumber makes and how many hours they put in to get there? More arguments over the value of college? I mean tons of people before you have asked the same type of question, and I'd bet most of them aren't any better off.

It isn't always, but that's life.

You’re definitely going to have to sort your priorities out. Some paths are more rewarding, some take more sacrifice up front, some maximize your income long-term, some short-term. The levels of time and effort required, independence, risk, are all other important factors and these are all things nobody else can weigh for you.

I suppose you could just continue working for $16/hr and live at home, socking away every penny until you're wealthy. I'm suddenly reminded of that Warcraft episode of South Park where they're grinding wild boars to level up.

I'd focus more on what you're bringing to the future, rather than what it drops on you. [Spoiler alert, you're not going to like all of it.]

Since I'm wired on coffee and can't sleep, let me pass on some specific suggestions that helped me over the years. I started out working bleh jobs for a lot of my 20s and then found my way later on -

1) Bring a positive attitude to work and don't complain about anything, to anybody. Don't moan that the software doesn't work, or that so-and-so is an idiot or anything like that. Instead just bang it out. You like your job.

2) Make it a point to take on tasks outside of your comfort zone, that's how you get better at things. I had a data entry job once where a couple teammates were terrified to answer the phone, and I ended up picking up a lot because someone had to. More work, especially being newer and unfamiliar with a lot that was thrown at me, but over time more people came to me with issues because they knew I could handle them.

3) Dress well. If you work a job that requires business casual, which is the case for a lot of aspiring 20-somethings, you're selling yourself short if you don't crush it every day. With your disposable income living at home you could probably even justify a handful of bespoke dress shirts, and finding a good tailor is a must. Set aside a little more for dry cleaning. It's cliche advice but for good reason - dress like a kid and you're more likely to be viewed (and paid) as one. If you want grownup money, wear some grownup clothes.

4) Always be working on a project outside of your normal job duties that you put a little bit of your off-hours into. It might be some handy thing you put together to help the team organize, it might be a certification program, it might be a class or two. It could just be taking good notes and studying up if it's a newer job. Just doing your job is kind of the bare minimum.

5) Play team ball. Your teammates getting worn or frustrated, say something nice and grab them a coffee when you get yours. Tell the new guy to relax and that he's doing a good job. Take something off someone's hands if they're overwhelmed. You have to set limits with some people who might take you for granted, but that's part of it.

I dont know if you need to reinvent yourself, that is good savings on such an income. Sure look for a better job, but I'd branch out to make more when you arent working. either a hobby turned side business on evenings / weekends or buy a property that has rental or airbnb income, or a fixer upper that you can put your effort into and get rewarded in a few years. These types of things you can do regardless your 9-5 job.

These are things that anyone can do. Some of the things people have suggested here are just not suited for anyone

^^ real talk. this is grown up advice that works.

EDIT: not sure about needing a tailor and drycleaning...however the principle holds...dress a little bit better than you actually have to or dress a bit better than your peers. Not so much that it is pretentious but just be well dressed.