I must agree, what a great thread.

These guys have given us all a heck of a lot of great advise. Spaniel, your long post was phenomenal. I am exactly your age, and unfortunately in nowhere near your financial position. I'm OK and in due time I will be there! I too made the mistake of having an extra few $$ in my pocket in my early 20's and thought I could buy 3 or 4 guns a year and then all of a sudden I found my self in such a freakin hole that I had to sell them all. Bigtim, I'm in the boat you might be in someday, though I was working full time through college, I took out a bunch of student loans but by God I had a nice truck and guns and my horses and what-not. Now I kick my self in the A$$ every time I send that student loan check out.

I didn't buy an AR (I actually don't care for them) but in the same situation you're in now, I bought a shiny new Ruger Red Label for something like $1,200 and it wasn't fun the day I took $600 for it to pay a truck payment and buy my beautiful daughter some diapers. But by God I did it, and have never regretted it. The lesson I learned off of that $600 loss was invaluable.

Please don't give up on school. I do agree that you should think about changing majors and get into a more demanded field. Also, for the love of God, don't be afraid to ask for help. I too can tell from your posts that you have trouble with grammer. That being said, ask your family to read each and every paper you write. Hell, email them to me and seriously, I'll proof read them for you. I just finished a Bachelor Degree program and graduated Suma Cum Laude, and my classmates leaned on me regularly to help them with the same thing, so I should be able to help. An additional piece of advise I have for you is to practice proper grammer and sentance structure in EVERYTHING you write! I think that instant messaging and the invention of text messaging is going to be the demise of our literary world as we know it. If your sending a text, posting on this forum or sending your buddies an email write it as if you were going to turn it in. Trust me, it will be good practice for you.

PM if you're interested in taking me up on my offer.

Good luck to you sir.