What's your profession? Age?

mr_m,

"Occupation : Cleaning up the city. ( I drive a garbage truck.)"

You are living my childhood dream. In fact, I wanted to be the guy at the back of the truck. I sincerely envy you.

Trained as a singer, and conductor of choirs and orchestras, and have spent about 2/3 of my career so far in church ministry and about 1/3 of my career in higher education as a music professor. Not being in a lucrative field has taught me the fun and adventure of improving my system as inexpensively as possible. The majority of my gear was purchased used (sometimes as much as 20 years old when I bought it), but it sounds wonderful to my ears. I'm 58.

I’m 68 and started out as a child.  In 1956 my dad built a Knight-Kit mono amp and a speaker cabinet from Electro-Voice Aristocrat plans which housed a University 6201 co-axial speaker (I still have the plans, I wish the speaker still existed). In 1961 he brought home a Voice of Music stereo tape recorder.  At 10.  years old I was hooked.  Dad’s systems after that always included tape and he liked the Sherwood amps and receivers.
For me a 45+ year career in broadcast, primarily TV production audio.  I’ve had systems until about 15 years ago thanks to illness.  Retired now and rebuilding a music system.  It’ll be mid-fi as my hearing is ‘assisted.‘  All told I’ll be making about a 6K investment, with the majority going to a turntable and speakers.

Fot me it’s all about the music.

Now 64yo retired. Living the life with my wife. Civil/traffic engineer for 40 yrs.
Got a deal I couldn’t refuse. A demo 250k system for 80k (less the components I had).
I’m a lucky, lucky man 😁 🇦🇺

I'm 61. Retired Law Enforcement Officer (34 years worth + 8 years active Military Law Enforcement = 42 freaking years) as of April 2020.....perfect timing. I have a mere <$14,000 into my system but it serves me well...I'm not going to go nuts about it but it is enough.