Putting in more money to get rid of the donks will only lose you more money. True, there are more maniacs at the lower levels, mostly because that type of play doesn't work so they can never afford to play at the higher levels. There is also the fact that there are moves you could pull on a pro that you couldn't use on a fish because they can't see deep enough into a hand to tell you're pulling a move on them and will probably end up making the choice you don't want them to make. With the $50 to $75 monthly allowance you give yourself, you should be playing .05/.10 nl tables, not .10/.25. Will you see more donks? ...sure. Will you see more maniacs?...you bet! Will you lose your monthly allowance in one day? Probably not, though it is possible.

Study these forums as well as the books suggested in here. Let's take the example you gave...You have KK and raise 3xbb. Not a bad raise, but obviously small enough to generate 2 calls. The value of pocket pairs goes down with each and every person in the pot. 2 is not bad though. Now you get a flop of TJ4 rainbow. A very nice flop for you, yet you only bet $1. I don't know the positions of any players since you did not provide that information (always provide ALL the information you can since every little bit makes a difference) so let's just say your two callers were the blinds. This makes the pot $2.25. You're 94os has about a 20% chance to improve his hand if he thinks you have him beat. If he figures you for something like AQ his pair might actually be ahead. Pocket pairs have a smaller chance of improving. You have 2 cards you would like to see, he has 5, plus the small chance of running cards for a straight, though that might scare him if he figures you for overcards. His $5 all in sounds like a donk move and it may have been. Then again, maybe he figured you for the over cards like I said and didn't want you drawing to them. My philosophy for AA and KK is 3x-5xbb preflop plus 1xbb per limper, followed by a pot size or larger bet on the flop unless it looks dangerous. There are better plays out there for more experienced players, but for me it works enough to make the money. You can also bet the pot preflop. I love doing that too. In EP it will be a somewhat small bet that may attract a few callers. The post-flop pot sized bet is then large and gets everyone out. In LP the pot sized PFR is usually large enough to scare them all out. You basically collect from all the limpers one way or the other which is about what you want with those cards. If anyone re-raises you preflop, then you may want to go all in. This is not a guaranteed win every time, but you will win much more than you will lose.

Watch out playing against maniacs. They can be big profits for you, but they can also wipe out your stack in a single hand. Study them for awhile and see how they are betting. If you have the cards, a big re-raise is a powerful tool. Let them know that they may be able to push some people around, but not you! If you have a tight image at the table, you may even re-raise with nothing in your hand. If they push back though, be prepared to fold. I have found that most people you would label as "maniac" still have something in their hand.

Study the game more. Read as many posts as you can, read the books suggested in this forum, study your own hands. I can't count the number of times when I was beat and I would copy the hand history down to study and see where I went wrong. Be careful labeling people as "maniacs". Part of what I used to consider a maniac, I now consider a better player. In the beginning you are concentrating on pre-flop play. As you get better, you then need to add in post flop play. Look at players like Gus Hansen. He is known for playing pretty much any two cards yet he is a winner. He reads people and he plays very well post flop. Starting out, I played very tight, somewhere around 10%-15% of my hands. Now I play 30%-35% of my hands. Dan Harrington considers this to be between aggressive and super-aggressive. I have a set standard that I play by. I know what I will play, and in what position as well as against what types of players. Sometimes I will make a call that a beginner would call a donk move or a maniac play, when in reality I am looking at the implied odds and not just the pot odds. I am also confident that when my move doesn't work, I can still get out of the hand without too much damage. There are times for pot odds and times for implied odds. I doubled up on two people the other day by doing this. One person because I used implied odds and got his stack with relatively little risk to me, and the next person because he thought I was playing trash and re-raised a marginal hand when I had AKs. Which is another thing, always think about how you are being perceiced at a table. Switch your game up so no one really knows what you are doing.

Grind it out at the lower limits. The potential for the big money isn't there, but the cheap experience definitely is. Learn to first get a feel for the texture of a table, then start honing in on individual players. It literally takes thousands of hands to do this. No book or forum is going to be able to give you that knowledge, only experience. Why pay for that experience where you can lose $15 - $25 in a single hand, when you can get it risking $5 - $10 or less?

Just the thoughts of a relatively new person. Through doing these things though, I have gone from break-even poker to win poker. I started with $100 on UB and due to their bonus I haven't lost a dime. I burned the bonus up a while back and am closing in on $250, at which point I will move up to the $25NL ring. I play poker EVERY day, and I read poker books EVERY day. HOH1 is a GREAT book for beginners. After about 20 thousand hands, HOH2 and Slansky really make sense and take you to another level.

Good luck to you!