Hello and welcome!
Eventhough I'm bitcointalk newbie myself, I've done some mining 2 months now, basically scrypts.
First of all, all those mining profit calculators shows the profit with current value of some coin, so if you trust that the market share with some specific coin you are mining is going up, then you shouldn't be too much worried about the profits at the moment. Of course it's not healthy if it costs you $50 a month and there's no profits coming. Anywho, this was probably same thing with bitcoins in the early years.
Second, there have been rumours about FPGA/ASIC miners for a couple of months already. Before the companies give some proof that they got a working miner I wouldn't worry about them too much.
But yeah, I guess it's more of like where do you believe the coin you mine are going and not what you can get off it now..
Happy mining if you decide to start it!