Ok - youve done better than me with the woman thing then.
But heres what i did when i was married and funds were tight.
I put ads in the paper for non working pins - snap em up cheap, fix em up and sell them on. All proceeds go to the next purchase. But i was lucky and scored a JD cheap and so paid off the credit card debt with that one and after that - anything that was earnt from them was put straight back into the hobby - became a self funding hobby
Exactly what I'm doing, Gavin.
Great minds think alike 
yeh mate - it took one lucky phone call - a JD for $400 - non working display. It was the power board - replace the zener and the associated components and that was then 100% - motor didnt work, but i gave that to a clock maker ( my dad) and he rebuilt that and the whole machine was solid. Sold it privately for $2400 and cleared the credit card debt. After that my family was pretty much debt free bar the mortagage. From that moment on my wife understood that pins were worth having around and so i could indulge myself from there. Apart from last year when i bought a lot of pins - my whole hobby has been self funded for nearly 10 years now with cash to buy more projects at hand.
If you can make it pay and your family can see the benefits then youll have no problem.
