Our collection is built solely around the best quality animals that we can find in the genetics that my wife and I both love. Typically, when purchasing new animals we look at bringing in new genetics or combinations to our collection. I think of it as bringing more ingredients into the kitchen. They still have to be the best ingredients around to make the food taste good lol. I hope our collection reflects that. With 65 snakes though, we are now moving more into the breeding and self sustaining collection stage than investment stage which is very exciting.

In regards to finances, we don't look to make millions off our collection or even to have it support either of us leaving our jobs. We would like it to support itself, pay back some of our substantial personal investment, and ultimately allow some funds for reinvestment into the collection. That being said, I do a focused ROI (Return on investment) study on each new addition, more to show my wife my plans and thought process before dropping personal cash. I also do a monthly P&L (Profit and Loss statement) to show the net effect on our personal finances as well as trends in the collection being self supporting. We are nowhere near there, but it is interesting to visualize the costs most people don't think of for managing and maintaining a larger collection - i.e. food, electricity, substrate, housing, and depreciation on capital investments.

A lot of that is just spill over from my primary day job, but still fun. I also have a few snap decisions that I love, so not everything is perfectly thought out lol. I will say a recessive project is much harder to leap into (we currently have 6) since it requires a larger amount of space/holdbacks and also a longer term project so my wife and I spend a lot of time discussing these before pulling the trigger.

Here is our current genetic ingredients lol:
Arroyo, Axanthic(SK), Banana, Black Lace, Black Pastel, Calico, Cinnamon, Champagne, Clown,Enchi, Fire, Genetic Stripe, Jungle Woma, Leopard, Lesser/Butter, Mojave, Nova,Orange Dream, Orange Ghost, Pastel, Piebald, Pinstripe, Spark, Specter, Spider,Spotnose, Trick, Vanilla, Yellowbelly