I have always lived well below my means. That has allowed me to retire at age 64 and with a nice comfortable lifestyle. My audio affection all began as an 8 year old, with a "stereo" that I played the Beatles. I was hooked. My parents Magnavox console was the next level for audio playback and that lasted through high school. Then, during my first years of college, I got my first serious system; Marantz 2270 receiver, Philips turntable with Stanton cartridge, and Altec 12" 3-way speakers. After graduating college I went to work at Pacific Stereo in order to save up and go back to graduate school. Well, graduate school never happened but my career with Pacific Stereo took me into management. I bought my first house within just 2 years out of college and bought a grand stack of Accuphase components, large Infinity speakers and a Micro Seiki turntable and tonearm. I got married and had 2 children. My career path continued in consumer electronics as a sales rep for Dual, Ortofon, Luxman, Triad, and Alpine. The Alpine car audio got me hooked on that fun. I then went to work directly for Alpine and climbed the corporate ladder. I managed the Western states for sales & distribution and the sales force. That was a great ride for 29 years and I retired from the workforce 2 years ago. I managed to put both children through college (1 with a Masters and the other a Ph.D) and paid off my second house (much larger than the first house) about 12 years ago. During those "kids years" we had a great home theater system for family entertainment but nothing even close to my big Accuphase system regarding high-fidelity. Now that I am retired I am back into building a grand high-fidelity music system. I'm up to about the $65K level and future plans will add about $10K more. That should do it for me for quite a while. Of course, being in the consumer electronics industry for so many years I still have a ton of friends and contacts. So, most of my purchases are at around dealer cost, sometimes about 10% or so over dealer cost, and for some items I still am able to retain industry accommodation pricing directly from the vendor. The system sounds amazing!
More important than anything now is to maintain good health. These are scary times. I stay home and listen to my hi-fi system...a lot!
I wish you all the very best in health. Be good and do enjoy the music.
