She hasn’t recovered from the tech bubble burst?! I think the problem is her. I got laid off during that mess, found another job in tech, now I’m making twice as much and working half as hard (startups are a cult, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise).
I know a guy who was in the same boat. Had a great 13 year run developing software, and then lost his job a few months after 9-11. Could not get another job like that anyplace.
So he bought a donut shop, and ran that for about 3 yrs.
By that time the IT business had recovered, so he sold the shop and went back to work coding.