I don't know where you are located, but I've worked with a lot of companies with development teams, and very few of the employees made over 80k, even seniors. Like I mentioned earlier, opening salaries for devs in my area is about 40k (from what I've seen). In 1999 I only made 36k out of college, but I was only doing simple rewrite tasks (y2k projects). I left the field after 2 years and got a job at a financial firm doing basic network and system technician work for 38k. So in my experience Dev jobs haven't been the high salaries I would have expected, but as I saw earlier in the thread people are making 80k doing what I do now for much less, so maybe my area just has lower salaries or high competition.
The only way you really make money in IT is if you jump around and get large raises each time. I have no doubt that senior developers who have worked at a place for 10+ years (where they started out of college) are making in the 80K range because companies don't give adequate raises in general. A jump or two would push that over $100K.
I'd caution against jumping JUST for money, however. You have to consider the entire comp package, work/life balance, and not only that, how much you like your current company and what its future looks like opposed to other places you might apply. For example, if a firm in electronics retail (say Best Buy or hhgregg) came to me and offered me $170K to come join them, I'd have to really think hard about it and if I took it, be prepared to exit quickly since that's a tough industry and they may not last forever.
A former boss and I used to talk about my future plans on occasion. As he used to say to me, don't feel that you need to make big bucks or move up the ladder - if you love what you do and are happy, there really isn't anything wrong with staying in that position.
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