What of your gross annual income is your system?

About 40% in equipment and 75% in lp's and CD's (not all bought in one year!). You need one anchor in your system which will not change much in the future so your first priority sould be to buy the best preamp you can afford, then the speakers and amp, then CDP's and turntables. Save the tweeks for last and spend your bucks on the best basic equipment you can afford.

About 20%. In decending order (most expensive first( Room construction, Front proj. speakers, amps, video proc. pre-amp, cdp, cables and tweaks

Assuming I had purchased my system at retail it wound have cost about 37%. You must understand this is a work in progress, thus, the manner in which my money is allocated is quite odd. Ibeleive i will elect to list as Constraveler did (in decending order). Pre-amp, cables, speakers, amp, cd player, subwoofer and tuner.

I guess that it's not what you make, but what you do with it. I've been putting things together for about 5 years. The most that any one item cost was around $3200. Speakers around $3200 x 2 (used), tube pre-amp $1500 (used), SS amp $2700 (used), tube amp $800 (used), active tube xover $2200 (new), tuner $2000 (new), dozens of NOS tubes ($?$?$?), power cond/cords $2500 (new/used), speaker cables $1800 (new/used), interconnects $3000 (new/used), trans+dac+jitter $3000 (used), room treatments $200 (used) and misc probably $1000 give or take. Throw in source material and the total is probably around $30,000. All new gear might be twice that amount. Averaged out per week over 5 years that's about $115/week. If I could do it all over, I would do things differently. I'm very happy with what I have. But I now know that I could build an equal system for less, that I would enjoy just as much.

I might be a little light at about 15% -- time to upgrade!!

Most of my system costs are in the speakers (33%) then the amps/preamp (purchased as a package at about 30%) then the speaker wire (10%), cd/dac (7%), room treatments (6%)and then all other. Stumbled into some great deals so my allocation is not really where I want it to be. The source systems, interconnects, room treatments and power supplies need more attention. But then, I'd really like to move to a tube preamp too. Lots of upgrading ahead! I can hardly wait.