get your a&p liscense and go work for the govt!!!! i plan on going to get my a&p some time soon. i work out at rafb on the c-5 cargo planes. we get paid pretty good...i have been there 3.5years and i make roughly 42k/year with no overtime..last year i made less money per hour than i do now but worked a bunch of overtime and nearly made 50k..with over time its no big deal to make in the 70-80k range for wg10 step 5's or wg11 &12's but it takes over time and you gotta get that base pay. night shift helps out too..you get an extra 7.5% on top of your regular pay.

i enjoy the job...they sent me to california for some schooling back in december and im due to go back pretty soon. the benifits are pretty good, you get a shit ton of leave (annual and sick) plus you get to participate in the tsp(thrift savings plan). i have been in it for 2 years..but for the first year i was only contributing 5% of my basic pay which was not much....but i have saved over $10k and im not any where near maxxed out on how much i can contribute and the govt still maches me up to a certaint %.

i never dreamed of working on airplanes...to be honest with you i was happy working some shithole job for $8/hour as long as i could afford to buy car parts....but now that i have grown up and got hip to whats really going on i am so happy i got my govt job....its pretty rad. i make more than some of my freinds parents make..i think thats pretty cool. you should give it a try.