$100k spent on music and $20k on the equipment or the other way around or 50/50 ?

During last 6 months, I spent 18K$ on hardware.

But I also bought 400 red book CD at 800$.

Some of that are very good at performance and sound.

I may not need to spend any money on hardware and software for next 3 years.

I may buy more CD since it is easy to do bargain hunting on red book CD.

At $2 a piece cds are almost disposable, play them once and throw away what you don't like. Unless you buy too many and then throw away thousands of dollars.
With equipment one can literally spend millions, and some do.
I always have a tight yearly audiophile budget, but I can go over by 10% or so. I can also spend it all at once for five years ahead. This covers equipment. As for records and cds, I don't really need a budget, I usually buy 10 or so items per year for about $30 on average.

I had not spent money on audio hardware from Aug 2013 to July 2018 except inexpensive music sever ( Cocktail audio x12 700$).

During that time I had been crazy about photography.

Once I started updating the hardware, I have to get the sound that I want.

But now after spending 18K$ for 6 months, it is almost over.

Now I get the sound that I want from my 100K$ system.

For next 3 years, I will do some tube rolling or inexpensive tweaking.

But without any change of major equipment, it will not be costly maybe 1-2 K$ for a year.

White Hot Stamper Fleetwood Mac
Super Hot Stamper Peter Gabriel So
White Hot Stamper Don't Shoot Me I'm The Piano Player
Super Hot Stamper Taproot Manuscript

Valiant effort underway to rebalance the equation.
https://www.better-records.com/search_adv.aspx?sp=elton+john&option=s_name&min_price=1&m...