I worked for 8-1/2 years at one company and then got married. Came back from our two week honeymoon to find the company was being sold and I would be out of a job in a month. Not what I needed right after getting married.

Then I worked at another company for 9 years while saving up for a down payment on my first home. At 7.5% interest at the time, I realized that (because of the sizeable down payment I had saved up) if I could only come up with another $20K down I could take a 15 year mortgage for the same monthly payment as a 30 year mortgage would be without it. So I squeezed finances for a while to come up with $10K more and borrowed the other $10K from my parents. The first year in the house I paid my folks back $1000 each month in addition to making the monthly mortgage payments. Then I lost that job as the owner was in his early seventies and wanted to retire, but both of his sons had already received their million dollar trust funds and neither wanted to work at running the company so he sold it to an out-of-state operation and all 85 people in the office lost their jobs. Not what I needed just one year after taking out a mortgage and buying my house.

But then I got the job I'm still at today, and I paid that 15 year mortgage off in 12-1/2 years by making one extra payment each year (after the first year), with the extra one year's worth of 12 payments eliminating another 1-1/2 years worth of interest. I like being debt free. I have few credit cards and only use them for the convenience, always paying the balance in full each month and never paying a cent in interest. Anything else must be saved up for and only be purchased when we have the funds in hand. That way we now own six cars which were purchased new but have not had a car payment in over 30 years.

The pinball machines I like are really expensive now. The most I have paid for a game is $6500 (for Stern Mustang Boss premium and also for the beat Monster Bash and the ton of new parts it took to completely restore it). I was worried that an even higher price tag for Elvira 3 when it comes out would be vetoed by my wife (who thinks I already have enough stuff), but having to pay taxes on top of that will certainly kill any chance for me buying it.

I live in the Chicago area. I was willing to buy local and pay sales tax if I could pick up the game at Stern and save on shipping, but no! It was $6500 plus tax here in Illinois (and I'd still have to pick it up from someplace like GAP) or $6500 delivered to my house if I ordered out-of-state.