Re-upping my hoard of domains every year costs a fortune, even after transferring them to a cheaper domain registrar, because I have so many.
I've even let a lot lapse over the years, some really nice ones.
But I hoard the remaining domains like a dragon sleeping on his gold.
My first domain registration was in 1996. I had started a side gig creating websites for businesses in the region. Back then I was going as "CG Internet Services" and I got the domain CGIS.co.uk which I thought was cool because of the double-meaning (CGI = Common Gateway Interface, how back-end programming was added to websites in the day).
When I got serious about the side-gig, I quickly realised that people weren't hiring me because they believed it was an agency, they wanted to work with a person, so I registered chrisg.com and I kept that ever since. I also radically updated my prices because the original pricing was pretty much based upon my "can you help me fix my inkjet printer" hourly rate, and as you can expect those were wildly wrong!
I did have other "company" names over the years, in particular RealWorldASP.net was a good one. That, as the name suggests, was when I specialised in ASP.NET development!
What is surprising to me is there are still 5 letter .com domains available. Perhaps there are so many domain LTDs now the gold rush is over?
=== AVAILABLE ===
bpahd.com cusmp.com dllzp.com dyfoc.com gmrgl.com gwnsw.com imhfb.com irvpu.com mrqsj.com qykma.com tscuo.com ufpcp.com vnrzo.com vrmkx.com xvheh.com
I opened one up with bravehost a while ago and it has been pretty cheap, but it's only one and it is pretty obscure.