Interesting to note how to Joel Spolsky says that $50.000 is "a very small amount of money". Where I'm from that amount would be fairly high for an angel investor.
That sort of thing scales with cost-of-living. Joel was making NYC money at the time of founding Fog Creek. $50k in South Carolina takes you halfway to a decent house. In NYC, a salary that big is barely enough to pay for an apartment in Manhattan for a year.
Maybe it's time to move...