Are you including tooling and measuring equipment, mounting accessories etc in your $5000-7000 estimate to the wife? lol I always lowball the wife on what it will cost and then add on as I go with any hobby, tell them the truth up front and get shot down quickly.
But really I see you new here and I don't know your background I just wanted to make you aware of the "incidentals costs" of owning a machine tool. Often they end up exceeding the cost of the tool itself so keep that in mind when you budget or you'll be looking at your mill wondering what you can cut now with your one endmill as you wait for the next one to come in
As for now I have tiny stuff.. Sherline CNC I redid that was an old Spectralight and a Taig micro lathe. The way I plan to get around the wife and the cost is to wait out my daughter finishing school which will free up thousands for some real steel heavy tooling.
If you get the right piece of equipment and learn to use it well you can probably get some paying work at times to offset your costs but it will never cover them unless your doing big runs of parts which can pay for a machine with the right bid and then its all yours. Even big shops justify a whole machine for one job if that job will even payoff the machine for them.
Bo