Does anyone remember the 80’s when great equipment was at a price anyone could afford.
Does anyone remember the 60's, before the rampant inflation of the 70's that led to the high prices of the 80's? lol! My first stereo was bought with newspaper route and lawn mowing money. Delivered the papers on my Schwinn, same bike I rode to Radio Shack to shop for my stereo on. My first acoustic treatments were egg cartons. My second stereo, Kenwood, Pioneer, Technics and JBL was bought with real money, McDonald's money, $1.85/hr.
Sorry, correction. This was 1973. We stopped using silver in 1965. The last vestiges of real money. By real money I meant big money. Back then, if you had a $20 bill you were loaded. Rich. You would carry that thing around, feel like a million bucks, do anything to not have to break that twenty.
This is all nuts and nobody's business, but not just because it is impolite to ask. Politeness varies widely across cultures. It is nuts and nobody's business because it is just plain chaotic disorganized thinking. If you want to talk about money, finance, investing, and how to get ahead in life fine, bring it on. I will dish it out and those who are smart will listen and learn how a totally normal guy who started out with a newspaper route and never made more than an overtime graveyard working x-ray tech winds up in the top 1% able to retire comfortably at 64.
What this shows is just how nuts the OP's question is. It's not where do we get the money. We don't "get" money, we earn it. One way or another. And once we do earn it, then the question is not so much what do we do with the money, as what do we NOT DO with it. I never had a car when all my friends did. I still do not have a cell phone! Process that one.
Granted this is a completely different perspective than most are familiar with. Pro Tip for the OP: if you want to be able to afford great gear some day, read and learn, to see things from a completely different point of view.