You're working at Broadcast.com doing tech support, making pretty good money, and then the company goes public. All those stock options you've been accruing are now worth a fortune. And then the company is sold to Yahoo!, and the stock is worth even more. On paper, you are now very, very rich. You are Michael J. Fox at the end of The Secret of My Success. You are Bud Fox in Wall Street before morality and legality become concerns. So you blow some of it. OK, you blow a lot of it. You get a new car--maybe a high-end SUV, maybe a BMW, definitely something black and shiny and fast--and you get a house or one of those spacious lofts that overlooks downtown. You get gadgets; you get DVD players, flat-screen TVs, Bose speakers, fancy stereo equipment. You get new furniture, real furniture, and everything on eBay you've ever been outbid on before. You get everything, because now you have money, and well, the Internet is only really starting to pay off, and this is all just the ground floor, the beginning, and you're only going to get richer and richer and richer. And then the dotcom boom turns into a bust, and the millions become thousands, or maybe even less. Maybe you don't have even a job anymore. If you're not one of these people, find someone who is and get to them before the repo men do. Make the classifieds section your bible, because yard sales are becoming outlet malls now. Kick them when they're down, because everyone knows that's the best time.