Mining as a side project

Is it worth putting three weeks of training into mining with a retriever for some quick cash flow, if my main goal is to play a military role, missioning, ratting, and salvaging? Right now, the ISK just seems to be trickling in very slowly from missions/salvages.

Thx for your thoughts.

Given your objective, you could consider a period of trading as alternative to mining.
The basic tutorials and the Sisters Arc will set you up with capital rather quickly. You then only need to train to fly industrials. No particular trading skills are needed to start with.
Doing trading runs is initially a bit tedious but so is mining I understand. Even early missioning is a grind. Still it earned me a few mil per week.
Now I can do remote trading which generates sufficient cash with minimal effort and lets me spend most of my time on missions and exploration.

Thx, I also figured out I can get into a retriever with mining strip 1s
in less than five days, so that makes it much more worthwhile to try.
Otherwise, I haven't been excited by mining missions, largely because
the agent gave me a courier/kill mission when I was in an industrial
and gave me a mining mission once I got back with a frigate, doh!

I would not put any into trading or mining if your main goal is a missioning/military role. Once you can solo lvl 3's and you salvage the wrecks from those missions you will be getting ISK much quicker and the skills you put into your character to improve your missioning will help much. Keep in mind that when the corp is running 4's you are invited you just need to ask. It is recommended that you have at least a BC though or even just a salvager.

Thanks,

Herm

The question you really need to ask yourself is what does your playstyle lend itself to? If you like to run missions as a general role, but occasionally find yourself wishing you could afk more, then I would recommend mining as a side role. Mining can be a profitable side role, but it will never earn you as much as you can running lvl3+. Your best bet is to train up to a ret (especially given your five day training time - I have no idea how you are doing that unless you forgot to include astrogeology as so many of us have done in your calculations) and join a corporate mining operation in highsec space. When these get big enough, you can earn some serious isk, and since payout is split evenly across the board, you greatly benefit from the more experienced miners chipping in.

*Read minimum mining requirements before requesting to join a corp mining op.