Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

This is important. There are SO MANY things you can do in aviation besides flying an airliner. Look at aviation business, aerospace manufacturing, aerospace engineering (if you want any hope of being a test pilot, you need this anyway), aviation safety, industrial and occupational safety in aviation, air traffic control and support, operations analysis, the list goes on and on.

In these jobs or fields, you'd be experiencing aviation day to day, and most likely would be able to afford some flying or a plane on the side. If you know how to do it right, you can do that part of it for minimal cost (homebuilt aircraft that are fuel efficient or much faster than production, etc).

Then, outside of this, there quite a few pilot opportunities outside of airline flying. These are the ones that require some experience and sometimes money, but if you want a viable path and want to be in aviation and fly ALL the time, this may be a good route as well. Get your seaplane and tailplane rating/endorsements. Become a CFI and teach other people these things. Then go be a bush pilot or fly for the forest service/agriculture dept. There is corporate flying of course, and quite a few things in between (contract flying, etc).

Bottom line is, do not focus too much on the above paragraph, focus on the first sentence that I quoted. There are so many things you can do. Even if you never get anything more than a private pilot certificate, there are a lot of jobs and aviation areas where that will benefit you in terms of knowledge and experience, and then you can fly for fun on your own terms.