[masraum]

Thanks.

In the course of about 2 years, my income tripled. We started fixing up our house (built in '67 and needed lots of work), and I bought my old 911. I had a great salary for a year, and then March of 2001 hit. The dot-bomb happened, and when the stock market crashed, the crazy money that companies were spending on networks and network engineers dried up. I didn't default on any of the credit cards that we had or the Porsche or anything else, but my income dropped by 80% for about 5 months, and then after that it was about 40%-50% down from what it had been. Over the course of the next 7 years, my salary gradually increased, but we had enough debt that we weren't making much, if any, headway against it. In the last 3 years or so it's been going down by leaps and bounds, especially the last 1.5 years. Assuming I keep my job, I should be set in a year. We're very, very much looking forward to it.

I plan to get another Porsche eventually, but I'll be paying cash for the next one. If I can't pay cash, then I can't afford it.