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You will want that 401k and health insurance and days paid off.

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You pay for all of these things.

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Indirectly yes. That is why if you take a salary of say $50k, it would be the equivalent of $65k or something, but employer is in essence 'charging' you for it.

Still, it isn't a bad thing since you get health care cheaper than you would get as individual and it heavily encourages savings which is a good thing in the long-term.

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You aren't going to be able to squish the people in here down into your narrow box of what a proper way of generating money is: getting a degree, working for $50k/y for a few years, and ending at hopefully $100k/y at 65.

People here have dreams and heart. They've found poker, a way in which their skills a rewarded directly, without passing most of the money generated to the owner of whatever company he is working for. People here have found a way out of that paradigm, of working for someone else, hoping for a 4% raise to get you up to $75k/year when you turn 25.

And yet you are trying to push them back down in. "99.9% of people go broke", etc. It's not going to happen. You can't show someone the light and then pretend it doesn't exist. The bottom line is that there are many many ways to make your own living, and in a more lucrative way, without having to fit in the work for someone else -> accept their orders -> take whats left of the profit you generated after the owner takes his cut, and gives the rest in the form of a paycheck.

If poker should die or become unprofitable for all but the 25/50+ players, which I doubt it ever will, people who don't want to be someone else's worker will find another way to make money independently. There are tons of ways outside of the conventional paradigm. And those used to being rewarded or punished based on their own actions financially will find them, and prosper.

As for the rest of what you say, everything else can be created through poker. You don't have to work for someone else to have a retired plan and nest egg, nor insurance. The government makes ways for the self-employed to get the usual benefits of retirement plans without a 3rd party holding your hand and saying you are allowed to.

You create a retirement account, with the usual benefits afforded by the govt in terms of interest and tax benefits. You take money that you make from poker, which is far in excess of what a normal job would provide, and put it in said account. There's your nest egg, your retirement fund. As for 'one bad rush', you don't understand bankroll management. A pro using conservative bankroll management has a much smaller chance of going broke than any career worker, who may get fired because of outside concerns, like downsizing, or the company going under.

The wife is now no longer worried. All is well.

The bottom line is that if you treat poker seriously and are good at it, you will make a serious amount of money and can use it in the same way you would if you were making it from a 'normal' career path. Except you have a lot more than you would if you were part of that career path.