Choosing a career with a large income associated with it is one way to leading a high-income, high net-worth life! However, choosing a career for which you have no passion will constantly sap your energy and have you wishing you were in a faraway, remote island - away from it all. Sometimes, you may choose a career, enjoy it for a decade or two, and then switch to a different career. This is normal and a rather healthy way to live, if such be your inclination. Fortunately, there are a variety of large income careers for you to choose from, and you almost always have the opportunity to move from one high-paying career to another - though with effort.

The usual suspects for large income careers are:

1. Executive role in almost any industry - Retail, Healthcare, Automotive, Insurance and so forth will provide you with an exceedingly large income career. Possessing domain expertise and passion for the industry, coupled with a MBA degree from a top business school and good recommendations can put you on a fast track to executive positions in most industries. This route often requires you to be relatively young (under 30 preferably), and then requires executive sponsorship from within the firm that you join for you to move into an executive position quickly. Incidentally, do not do your MBA part-time for this route to work for you.

   However, executive positions can be acquired without an MBA degree as well, as you join a firm after a Bachelor's degree and display your skills as a technical and project leader, and then as a manager and begin rising up the chain quickly. Executive sponsorship, directly or indirectly is still required to break into an Executive role in most large companies.

   Alternatively, join a small/medium firm and help it succeed in a big way, by helping them land the next big contract, or make the huge sale. Please notice that technical career paths, while lucrative, are not the easiest road to an Executive role in most industries. Marketing and Sales is where most of the action generally is.

2. Career in the Medical line as either a doctor or dentist is a well-known path to a job paying $150,000-$400,000 - and is one of the main reasons why that line is so competitive for gaining admissions. Clearly though, if you do not love the field, you can get sapped very quickly in this profession.
3. Role of a Technical Leader in high-tech firms - While the position of an Executive is generally not easily conferred on a person pursuing a technical career, high technology, including IT, offers a slightly different solution because technology is the lifeblood of firms in these industries. As a technical leader, you can still rise to a position of prominence and draw upwards of $250,000/year quite easily.
4. Consider areas which have suffered from low supply for several years but are coming back in favor - such as nuclear engineering. For the next couple of decades, these engineers are likely to get paid top dollars and rapid promotions to the top of the hierarchy even as the world makes its steady move to nuclear power.
5. Areas such as nursing are also in high-demand and low supply, but the incomes do not generally exceed the $60,000-$80,000 range. But you will have multiple years of job security - which can provide that cushion you need to try the several extra income ventures listed at this site.

As a resource, look at the Outlook for Labor by the Bureau of Labor Statistics - it gives you a good sense of which professions are in demand today and likely to be in the next year or two, and expected salary ranges.