SkyHigh sees the future: These days you have to be able to 'afford' to be a pilot. That is, for all but the elite pilots, the pay is so absurdly low that only the financially secure can do such work.
Career 2, you could have been writing about me. Having started on ppl in my youth and given it up, then spending the rest of my life with the nagging feeling that flying airplanes was what I should really be doing, I started on my ratings at age 50. Began with glider, then com. glider (giving sightseeing rides) then SEL (then discovered you can use 150 glider hours for com. SEL (and save about 10K on rental fees), made friends at airport for cheap rentals, other friends were CFI, never went to a flight school, studied and passed all my written tests on my own, got the comm. MEL last year, and am now finishing up the instrument rating. Will probably finish all my ratings for around 15K.
I now have two flying jobs, one as a glider pilot and one at a part 135 cargo op. The word 'job' is something of a misnomer because the pay is so laughable. Still, I'm flying some very cool airplanes and having a blast!
I say go for it. I cannot begin to tell you how rewarding the whole process has been and how it has improved my self esteem. Not being in it for the `big bucks' (or even the modest bucks) I have experienced none of the bitterness or frustration of the many, many underpaid and underemployed professional-pilot wannabes out there. Also, being older, one's ego is not tied up in the whole thing the way it would be if one were younger.
My advice to the young starving pilots whom I know is to get out of aviation and make some money elsewhere, then return to your true love. Money has a tendency to corrupt all things; letting it corrupt one's love of flying is a tragedy.