Whether it would pay off or not totally depends on how much you're willing to invest and also the cost of the electricity in your country. In my opinion, If you can afford mining, stay away from trading, it's not as easy as it seems. Check whattomine.com, it will give you an idea on the coins that are worth mining including the costs, profitability and everything else you need to know.
Do you know the average costs of buying the equipment for mining?
As far as mining Bitcoin is concerned it seems like currently you could get started with hardware for as low as USD 263,- (PSU and I presume various taxes and shipping costs not included):
https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020190911155155939FluJlFo406C8In terms of efficiency the above ASIC miner is already terribly outperformed by other miners though so it'll probably be nothing more than an expensive doorstop. So if you want to have hardware that actually has a chance of making a profit you'll probably won't get below USD 2,000,- such as that one:
https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020190917150041561N918SAIe0626There are other ASIC miner producers out there as well, but I presume they'll be at about the same price level.
Many alts are still mineable using GPUs, there you'll have to see which GPU is the most efficient for the currency you want to mine. In that case price is only limited by how many GPUs you can cram into something that remotely resembles a PC. For creating a dedicated mining rig with, say, 3 GPUs, you could probably get started with maybe USD 800,- upwards.
Hardware cost comes only second to electricity cost, however. Unless you have access to cheap electricity, it'll be hard to reach a return on your investment. Punch your electricity costs per KWh into a mining calculator and see how it turns out. Be aware that mining income diminishes monthly, with your mining rig being deprecated and non-profitable within 6-12 months.
So with that being said, mining can be profitable. But unless you want to commit to it or do it as a hobby it's probably easier to just buy the coins you are interested in.