"That's an absurd amount of money to pay fo XXX"

[PlzHelpMe]

All,

Just a general comment. This comes up a lot in threads about:

cars
watches
restaurants
alcohol
sporting events
concerts
electronics

and tons of other stuff.

Here's my advice. If you think the absolute dollar amount someone is paying for something is ludicrous, just ignore the post/thread and move on.

I personally don't care enough about watches and cars to spend a ton of money on them. On the other hand, I spend a ton of money on restaurants, alcohol, and concerts. This could be completely reversed for someone else. So, it's pretty useless for either of us to comment on the amount spent by each other on these items, since our perceived utility of money spent on these things is just totally different for personal preference reasons.

Regarding opinions on such things, I think they usually only add to the discussion if they are in terms of relative comparisons as opposed to absolute ones.

"Spending $200 on dinner is absurd" doesn't add any value. "Spending $200 on dinner at xxx is absurd when you can get a better dinner for $150 at xxx" does.

Carry on.