You might want to try mining various altcoins as they have much lower difficulty than bitcoins.  At this point, it is hard for anyone but professional mining companies.

-Aglacan

Yeah I would definitely use a light wallet like electrum.  You don't have to bother with all the syncing.

Here's a link to the electrum wallet download.
https://electrum.org/#download

-Aglacan

Completed.  Hope it helps.