Sure I can have those expectations! My old man brings home more in a month than I make in a year. And in 2008, they pay is suppose to go up. If not, my pops is still happy making what he makes. He's never made over 200K a year and he's retiring 8 years early (next year). He's been a pilot during the majority of the "de-reg" years and has done very well for himself. He's been with a dozen airlines in the process and has still managed to buy an RC-3 Seabee (www.republicseabee.com his website), two houses (on the lake) and retire early. I'd say that's doing pretty well, finacially. Does he want more? Absolutely not. He's absolutely content with is life: commonly referred to as "being grateful". But I'll give you something skyhigh, there were times where he did feel like throwing in the towel, in fact, he's called me on several occasions just absolutely livid with the industry. But where would he be if he quit? I don't know either, but he's happy with the way things are because it could have been a lot worse. If there's one thing we can agree on, it's that aviation (flight schools in the back of aviation magazines) are filled with false information and deception that you have to pay $62K to get you ratings. My dad's advice: let the damn company you fly for pay for your RJ type rating. And that's the way it should be. He never had to pay for a single type rating in his life (except for his flight engineers license). All my flight training is done old school: all on my own, except for my private which was a gift. And one more thing, please enlighten all of us on the definition of "normal life". However, skyhigh, let us decide for ourselves if this is what we want to do to achieve our normal life, because there is no standard for normal life, everyone has there own definition. I would rethink whether your views are unbiased here because all I see on your posts is building a normal, middle class lifestyle, being a home owner and ditching the idea of being an aviator for the bottom line. That's not balanced.