I could never be happy with a corporate job. For me that represents hours slaving away doing menial tasks, mentally and emotionally stagnating whilst enriching my bosses. This is just me the important thing is if you are growing, if you are challenged and enjoy your work. Trading is more than just big bucks. It is a journey where you will be sorely tested, you will have to face your psychological demons and you will have to rebound from setbacks and failures time and time again when you first start out. It is a process in which you will grow, understand the workings of your mind and become resilient... and when you succeed you work on your own terms, where and when you want, and your income is limited only by your skill and mindset. And if this is what you really want, you should be overall enjoying the process of trading. For great traders money isn't really the goal, its a way of measuring performance so you can say, hey look, I've improved.
But in computer/engineering you would have to work harder to get those degrees. I Majored in Accounting, found it pretty easy, has rules, it is just takes time to do, once you get the hang of it, pretty easy, not much changes, tax accounting is tougher as rules change. I currently do part time consulting as accounting detective for local when owners can't find money when books balance, I like doing odd assignments as it allows me to use the" how would I screw the owner" concepts, very seldom is it mistakes. It sort of goes along with all I trade, where are the retail coming in or out and take opposite positions. There are many graduating from colleges and just so many jobs, and there are many with prior experience and those with Masters as well all going for same jobs, if you don't work hard to show you can go beyond those who don't, how can you expect to get best jobs? Before and even now, psychological demons still exist, following your Trading plan will be the toughest part of doing day after day, really hard to do, we always get certain feeling that something else will happen and want to do something that is untested. So many times of violating rules and getting hurt bad, you would think that would stop, LOL. I think it best regardless of experience you think in term of percentages than the money, otherwise you start thinking you lost rent for the month or lost new car, percentages are best.
I hesitate to fill the OP's head with these kinds of fluffy thoughts. The romantic stuff is nice, but it should not be paramount. Yes, while "on the journey" you have to find your demons and successfully tame them to succeed at trading. But some of us trade to make money (yes, really!!). If I thought I could make more money doing something else legal and just as pleasant, I'd do it. Yes, money is a way of measuring performance and improvement, but for some of us, it is also the goal. FWIW, I have done a lot of interesting stuff at corporate jobs and learned a lot about the world that way. Although I cannot say I loved working for other people, much of it was interesting and challenging, not menial. I had the opportunity to work with some really cool and brilliant people (and of course the usual small complement of assholes). I'm not sorry I did it, though I'm glad I don't have to do it any more.
Romantic perhaps but its absolutely logical. If your goal whilst you are trading is to make money, you are setting up expectations and you your trading becomes affected by your pl. You are disappointed or frustrated when you have losing trades or are in loss (leads to undercontrolled trading). You become scared when you are up money or are near equity highs (overcontrolled trading). Whilst it may be your goal to make a ton of money, money cannot be in the equation whilst you are actually trading.
OK, but I'm assuming one has a workable system with an edge and a money management scheme so you don't become scared or uncontrolled. I just do the same thing week in and week out, CNBC be damned. I keep doing it whether I have an up week or a down week. Over time, it is profitable. It's a probabilities game.
As a fellow lazy person, I'm going to say that if you want to be lazy that's fine, there is more to life than fast cars and spending loads of money on crap, I work part time hours for a full time ish wage and supplement it when bored by trading. Was trying to phase out work altogether just to trade, but got offered more money and hoped fixed Min and no work to do, but alas there making me work for it, in the short term I treat trading as a part time hobby, although I mastered Stocks 18years ago quite quickly swing trading wise, day trading is tricky been at that 10years already, didn't get good till approx 18months back, but didn't really take it to seriously some years not more than 5 day trades. IQ 136 and I'm a good programmer, although I don't code trading systems, too much like my day job! Try trading, but it's a bad gamble if it's your ownly option, so keep your options open. Maybe you'll be good at it instantly ?? I was with Stocks pretty much!
Thats excellent stuff, lots of people have difficulty with that. When emotions come into play and are unacknowledged its easy for that to sabotage logic and cloud judgement, can easily cause people to do things that arent part of the system or plan.
If you start small, you have no emotions. People play with larger amounts than they are comfortable with. As soon as they have a bad patch, they markedly decrease their capital at risk. Sure as shit the next time period is profitable, but they are too scared to partake. There is nothing wrong with being 99.9% in cash or other conservative vehicles at first if that's what it takes for you to learn. You can get bigger very slowly.
Very few people who eventually reach the realm of making huge profit consistently didn't lose a very significant amount of money at their early stages of trading if they explored the market by themselves.
That's only because of the stupid you need 20k just to start or your under funded and you will lose, guess what at first you will lose what ever you have and more, Stocks i was up 24k, Options 16k based on taken out vs put in, options eventually killed me, hence the move to forex. Yes i spent it all having fun. Day trading worst case - 3k, currently at +4k. So if your sensible you can put in $100 per month and learn with that so keeping you learning curve on the cheap side.