Get out of the rat race: Earn money without the highest educational qualifications

Railroad conductor: In the U.S. professional railroad conductors are still around. In some areas the national median salary for them is just $54,000. But, it does go all the way up to one hundred four thousand dollars.

The grunt is working your way up in a dying industry and learning on the job without many mentors or companies to choose from, you're away from home for long periods of time. But, the grass is you get to see the country in an old-timey kind of way. You get to feel like that kid you once were with your first train set and you can avoid the 9:00 to 5:00 until corporate America to kiss your caboose all aboard.

Crab fisherman: Tolerating the miserable work of capturing crab through terrifying squalls for five figures per month was popularized by Discovery Channel's reality series The Deadliest Catch even negotiating the dynamic between the personalities on board. It seems treacherous enough to think twice but in recent years changing safety regulations have made fishing for Dungeness crab much possible.

There is also an after season for other 

kinds of crab as well as fish. All said and done, you can still clear $200,000 a year after a few years experience. The grunt work is working your way up because there is no school for crab fishing. You have to find a crew you trust and respect, to show you the ropes for when you start as a deckhand and you'll be away from home and leave your loved ones behind to work. The grass is having a non-traditional career and six figures to roll hard on in your few days on land.

Building inspector: It's not 

super scintillating; but, if you're good with checklists and you have a mind for structural engineering working for a city, government,inspecting buildings could bring home six figures. The grunt part is working your way up in the kind of large bureaucracy. That is, a major US city that is big enough to pay at least sixty eight thousand dollars per year and all the way up to one hundred seventeen thousand dollars per year.It's also highly specialized. So, you'll give up other career tracks and there are a few months of studying for a standardized exam. But, the grass is a well-paying job with predictable days and permanent demand for your skills.

Egg donor: This is

 an opportunity you can make your full-time gig if you're really determined to get some cash. The grunt is altering your cycle feeling like a human petri-dish and the whole ethical conundrum of creating a human you'll never meet. But, the grant is up to $14,000 per cycle. So, you could if you go on back-to-back cycles and take two months off, clear about a hundred forty thousand dollars in a year.

Anesthesiologists: In their quiet bedside 

role near the superstar surgeon look like some kind of low-level nurse or technician. They're actually doctors and they make Bank. The grunt is med school like any other doctor that's completing a four-year degree doing the MCAT preparation, to take the standardized exam to get into a decent Medical School. Then, going through four years of medical school and four years of residency that actually comprised a one-year internship plus a three year residency.

Some anesthesiologists do additional residencies beyond those twelve years mandatory and then have to study and take the board exam to become board certified. That board certification is an important credential to earn the trust involved in taking someone safely through a major surgery and recovery. But,then the grass is you make more than a family doctor general practitioner, pediatrician or psychiatrist does. That is,  anesthesiologists take home on average two hundred ninety four thousand eight hundred eleven dollars. That is, a national average in larger US cities. Their annual salary is in the four hundred to five hundred thousand dollar range. 

Writer editor for the State Department: In which you don't do any foreign policy analysis or speech writing, but, analyze communication, documents and systemic functions of the department itself. It grosses you ninety five thousand to one hundred twenty three thousand dollars per year. If you'd like to do something similar for the Department of Energy and recommend standards for documentation for adults and other reports you could start as low as seventy nine thousand dollars. But, also go up to one hundred twenty three thousand dollars.

The grunt is working your way up in adult bureaucracy and memorizing templates and standards and learning to speak bureaucratics. The grass is the money, the great benefits and the job security.