I only buy cheap English muffins

I travel the world removing change from fountains and wells.

Dirt poor throwaway kid from broken family. Typical late 60’s- early seventies family. Grew up poor, angry and ambitious. Got a full time college degree between working full time, married and living on 3 hours of sleep a day for years. Got into automotive field and found working in same ethic magically provided strong income. My two kids are grown up but still living with us, house will be paid off next year and all cars paid off.

Started collecting in 2005 and found pins to be traded up and repaired, some keepers, and between my muscle cars being a mechanic and fixing my older pins, both hobbies merge.

I sell propane & propane accessories Bobby

Lawyer...but not a greedy one. Needed to referee hockey, umpire baseball and work as a private detective to afford my two pin collection, which I hope to double in 2019...before my wife gives birth to our first child.

I am a western sales manager for an Italian hydraulic coupler manufacturer. I fund this hobby by saving my bonus checks and doing working vacations.

I have a wife that works full time at American Century and we have 3 kids. In lieu of a normal vacation, my company allows me to rent a house in Seattle for my family; I work most of the days and my family enjoys a 2 week vacation.

Farmers market on weekends!

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When I finished High School, I was literally only half way done with formal education.
4 years undergrad degree
4 years medical school (slavery that I had to pay for the privilege of undergoing)
1 year internship (more slavery with a few scraps to live on, making far less than minimum wage, based on an hourly rate)
4 years of residency (indentured servitude)
1 year of fellowship (more indentured servitude)
Finally at age 32, I was able to get a real job. From there, we did not spend above, or anywhere close to our means. We did not take extravagant vacations or buy 2 or 3 houses. We live comfortably, but saved and invested (and are still saving and investing) for our retirement and for our children's education.

Also,
Stay out of credit card debt.
Don't buy what you can't afford to buy or make mortgage/car payments on. The interest payments will sink hopes of financial success.
Don't gamble more than you can afford to lose (or any at all).
Most pinball machines will not lose most of their value if you need to sell them. Yes, you may lose some money but, most of the time, it is not a huge loss.

Some amazing careers and some very sound advice from many pinsiders.

Thumbs up !

and
Fletch rulz

Well done all !

I would like to do farmers market but we are yet to get the amazing herb over the line here. getting closer though

Australia is fortunate to be able to rape natural resources so my job is to help with technology systems.

My work is high risk as is OP and we should all appreciate your efforts, Thank you.

There is so much required to make the world go round these days.

So if you can add a little fun with pinball and great friends the world can be more fun.

We are all fortunate to be in a position to enjoy this cool hobby.
Enjoy all and life is too short to take basics for granted.

Ando
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I'm a police officer and work a lot of overtime! Plus no wife and only one kid that's 17. I had a large video game collection that I sold off to buy more pins.

I'm not a millennial by any means, but these kids have it a lot tougher than you ever did. College loans can keep a kid in debt until they turn 60. Getting a job means they have to take a year or two in unpaid internships. A job without an education won't be able to support yourself, let alone a family, like they used to be able to do back in the 60s.

There's a reason why so many 20-something and 30-something year olds still live with their parents. I also used to think they were lazy. Now I feel sorry for them.

postman. single, inheritance......

Blue collar plumbing and electrical industry jobs pay great and there isn't college time and money overhead.

Friends kid got out of tech school and immediately started working as a machinist for $20 an hour and has almost doubled that in 2 years.

It also depends where you live. $80,000 a year doesn’t go as far in the northeast as it does in the Midwest and south. When an “inexpensive” house is $300k. Income doesn’t go as far.

It’s super unfair to be judgemental unless you know someone’s exact circumstances.

Blessed to be in the right place at the right time. Got into Cyber Security early in the boom. Bought a fixer upper house in a great neighborhood.

Still only have a 3 pin collection. Bought all 3 by buying older ones, fixing them up, and selling for what I eventually wanted. Haven’t lost money on a game yet but that is much harder these days. Have no interest in selling any of my current collection.

Psychologist in private practice

I have a tech rep job with a paint company, wife works part time, one kid in travel softball, so lets say I'm not rolling in tons of disposable income. How did i end up with 8 pins, and 3 vids? Easy, buy fixer uppers, and spend time making them super nice, then trade up to better quality fixer uppers. Go slow, has taken me 25 years of collecting to get here, don't feel pressure to build a collection over night. Priorities, we drove older cars that we paid cash for, buy them 5 years old and keep them, don't feel like you have to have the newest car, home, etc. No big income here, just saved my one dollar bills in the beginning in my console, after i had $800 i would start looking for the right pin. In todays money, might want to save all your $1's and $5's, if your gonna buy an item at the convenience store it it will cost you $10 or more. You will be surprised how fast you will come up with $1500-$2000 to buy something decent to get you started , and then keep going until you have your collection .
JP

I'm a civil engineer and I make a good salary and my wife works in pharmaceuticals and makes good money.

But my wife didn't always work and we had a lot of expenses.

The way to make your finances work is to run a decently strict budget.

Use a spreadsheet and make up a realistic budget and stick to it.

Put a line item in there for "fun stuff" like maybe $200 or $300 a month, otherwise you won't stick to the budget.

A budget is a matter of arithmetic, it will tell you what you have to spend and what you don't.

The big thing to avoid is personal credit debt.

The people who make credit cards retire to a house in Hawaii and the people who use credit cards retire to a trailer park in Trenton, New Jersey.

That should be a hint right there.

I think the OP answered his own question.. One income with 2 kids? I'm amazed you have any pins.
We're a double income no kids, I'm an engineer but that's besides the point because I never use my "salary" to buy pins. My first 4-5 pins were all bought by fixing games up and selling for profit during the boom.

Since then I've made a little bit doing that still (but I've also had some losses)
I also use end of year bonuses
I have a mod side business
I also have a 3d printing farm to help others make mods

Live in California, 2 kids, wife works in HR, I’m union carpenter/Formen in commercial been doing this since I was 18 years old. Told the wife it’s either a new pin or a new wife she agreed with the new pin hahahaha..

No kids

Sacrificed during my twenties instead of doing the usual things that many do at that time like overseas trips in favour of property investment and getting my law degree.

Started my thirties with a sizeable university HECS debt and property loans that needed paying off. Went into private practice as a solicitor (attorney to use the US vernacular) for a firm and gradually eroded that debt with generous remuneration but little time for anything else. A few machine purchases here and there as fixer uppers but little else.

Once I hit 40 that earlier sacrifice paid off so I currently only have to work part time by choice in the public sector (State Attorney General's Dept) to keep my qualifications relevant and can now spend more time on pinball machines as the property investments act as a top up.

I fit into the double income no kids category but for pinball purposes our incomes would best be described as separate in the same way as my spouse's expenditure on clothes/shoes is separate.

As for the overall affordability side, I'm not particularly interested in the current artificially inflated NIB experience epoch that pinball seems to be going through considering what you get for what you pay for down here. Would rather bring in a container of used machines from overseas and restore them back to as good as NIB at my leisure. Resell the surplus to first time buyers then do it all again in 12-18 months as time/finances permit.

As a 20 year old, yes and no.

Hampshire College is a school out here with outrageous tuition prices and no grades. Yep - no grades.

College is a business and by marketing it as obligatory, a lot of kids feel that going to college is just the thing to do - even if they’re unsure about their own goals.

The constant pressure to go to college from my high school was overwhelming - my friends and I were bombarded with advertising, recruitment and guidance counseling.

Feel like there had to be kickbacks going to someone at the school for the level of intensity behind the preaching.

There are millennials out there doing well - a good portion of them did not go to college, but are in the trades.

It shocks me how many people in their early twenties I sit down with to sell to.

It really is a case by case basis on who to feel bad for.

Total 100% bullshit and so far from the truth its laughable. The reason so many 20-30's "kids" live at home is because they are lazy. I work with them everyday, its painful to watch. A fucking smoke is more important because hey, I'll just complain later...

I mean - congrats and all, but that’s Canada.

Abandoned mill towns in Northeastern CT where I grew up - has a very small economy.

For a lot of those kids, it was either go to college and live on campus somewhere else in New England and be in debt forever, or find a trade and work as an apprentice for X amount of years.

Don't know of any trailer parks in Trenton,NJ. but there is one in Robbinsville NJ.

This is VERY presumptuous and intellectually lazy. Don’t be an a-hole.

Exactly the response I was expecting.

Let me go a little further, since your reply is entirely based on garbage...

I used to live in Kelowna, BC. Which arguably is one of the top 5 places in the world to live. I would water ski all day, party all night and ski all winter. I also worked at an arcade and made minimum wage. Time came, realized I couldn't continue make this work and moved. NOT because I wanted to but because it made sense. Scraped to get by but it was all worth it in the end.

Keep trying to make sense of lazy people, its really quite enjoyable...

I'm not an officer but I use OT to fund this hobby too.

LOL, must have hit a nerve with a lazy person.

Ummm. No. Just calling you out.

By the way, what exactly about that is presumptuous?

I worked my ass off to get what I wanted. That's presumptuous???

I came from nothing and bettered myself, that's presumptuous??

I moved from party town to work town to better myself, that presumptuous??

I think you better rethink that.

I run a pinball arcade . . .

But seriously, out of college I worked internationally often 60-80 hours per in construction overseas (so most of expenses were paid for and little time to spend money on anything). I sent my money home and my dad invested it for me. When I got back like 8 years later I had a pretty good chunk of change saved up. I think the sacrifice was worth it. I continued to invest and work my up through the construction industry. Once I settled down, I had to have pinball machine (and way overpaid). But for number 2 I searched craigslist for a bargain and found it. Number 3 was restoration / play field swap ($1,400 funhouse). Number 4, 5, 6, 7 . . . yeah its like a bad crack habit.

Congrats on your fabulous early years.

On what? Actually working hard? lol

I enjoyed them thank you.

Oh and yeah, Canada and all....

Your right, I couldn't have worked hard in your part of the world.

Painting with a broad brush about an entire generation. It’s lazy. The people you work with might be lazy, but that’s not representative of all or even most 20-30 year olds.

To make this post, all you did was observe your surroundings and come to an anger & hate-riddled conclusion.

I work in the field and I've seen 1,000 HS students go on to the next level. It's not true for all, but it's 100% accurate that the path to success in 2019 is far more difficult than it was in the 1960s. The government was bipartisan. College was so inexpensive that you could pay for it with a summer job. If you wanted to work at a local factory, you could do that too and still earn a living wage.

None of this is true today. The path is tougher. Your experience with snot-nosed punks does not accurately represent today's youth as a whole.

In the town I grew up in? You sure could have - either at the Laundromat or the Walmart. No where else to work.

Its representative of ALL generations. You clearly can't read or just don't care too. Let me say it again, hopefully this will help your old mind out.

I was in a bad situation and wanted something better. I moved and worked my ass off to get where I am.

Complaining isn't the answer unless your lazy.

Thank you for the history lesson. Reading clearly isn't your strong suit. I'm 43 now, moved when I was 20. Never went to college, why would I? I make more money than most who did.

Keep trying...

I'm close to your age. It also doesn't look like we disagree. If you're not lazy, you can make it.

All I'm saying is that the path today towards success is harder than it was 50 years ago. Agree or disagree?

Actually, it does.

The losers I work with, cant pass 2 months of school. They fall a sleep in class after a night of x-box. They show up late, leave early and smoke 20x a day. That's accurate, I see it everyday.

Work 60 sometimes 70 hours a week depending on the time of year. No travel or pinball tournaments. Eat cold cereal, oatmeal and pizza mainly, love soups.

Took my first major vacation of 25 years of marriage to Hawaii last November.

Live within your means, penny pinch.
Buy low, sell high.

No college debts when you work in the trades.

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You're avoiding my question, which was 100% entirely the point of my original post, just so you can rant about something I wasn't eluding to.

Attempt number three to my point: The path towards success is harder today than it was 50 years ago.

Yes or no?

Sorry but I totally disagree. I mean if you want to be a doctor or lawyer, sure. That doesn't change the fact I work with people who could make hundreds more each week but care about smoking and socializing more.

If you guys are done beating each other up.
I or my parents couldn’t afford college so I joined the military. After about 10 years of service, I moved to the private sector. I do very well working at a Nuclear Power Plant as in Instruments and Controls Specialist. My work in antiquated electronics translates perfectly into pinball repair.

What is success? Being a billionaire lawyer, an amazing doctor?

If you want to waste years of your life going to school and having debt forever, yeah its harder.