In fact, I have never earned a cent in my life doing any work that was not software related. I wonder where I would fit on this planet if I was born in an earlier century. After I moved back to the USA at age 19, I was the youngest employee of two software companies for which I worked over the course of 3 years. As I have been getting older, it has become more difficult to break this kind of records. Having turned 23, there is now someone in my group at Netscape who is the same age for the first time, though he spent years in college while I was working in the industry.
Some people joke that programmers have computers that cost more than their cars.
Well, I have yet to learn driving and thus have never spent a single cent on cars or gas. I commute to work either by biking the 10 miles to Netscape in Mountain View, by using Caltrain , or VTA buses . But usually it's a combination of several. I don't keep a count on how much I spend on computer stuff because it would be too scary, but it would probably amount to about 3 new cars over the last decade. Or maybe about the downpayment on my townhouse in Santa Clara, which would be close to the total cost of a house in some other states.