Are you Guys Rich or What!?

I agree - stay away from the leading edge, read magazines from two years ago as though they're current, get all excited about what they're raving about and go buy it...used. Stay behind the curve and you'll have all the fun for a lot less money, missing out only on bragging rights.

I found a great way to do this is to have your world turned on it's ear for 18 months or so. Have some personal, professional and national crises all strung together, completely distracting you from whatever you think you want to buy, and come back 18 months later still thinking you want the same thing. The price will be VERY reasonable at this point. You buy the stuff, put it all together, have a fabulous system and imagine that the calendar is rolled back 2 years - you then have a state of the art system that costs mega $$$, only you didn't spend mega $$$. If you pull this off correctly, you get 99% of the thrill with about 33% of the financial pain. -Kirk

If $7500 MSRP will get you a great system, think what you can do by buying all your stuff off of audiogon.

It could cut the price in half or it could allow you the option of purchasing more equipment/dollar.

Kthomas, you said it! Especially true with the digital gear!!!

I have read this thread as a "new" person with some interest and it seems to me there will be a permanent loop. What is one mans penny is another mans pound. The whole issue is subjective, I am sure that noone here doubts that 100k on music equipment in most contexts is irrational but we justify it because it brings us pleasure and in a world where that particular commodity is getting hard to come by, prices like taxes go up. I for one will always enjoy the reproduction of good music but will again do it by looking for those elusive deals. When your ten year old sits next to you identifying various instruments and presence that is justification enough for me.

In electronics engineering, we go by a rule of thumb that after the circuit is built, each effort to improve it by just 10% will double the costs.
Now don't apply this literally, but I did like sgmlaw's letter, posting the opinion that this is a hobby of diminishing returns.
Once you have a system you are happy with (didn't it knock your socks off when you bought it?) you are wise to enjoy it. Right now, people are drunk with money. The 'two-years removed' approach is very good advice, in my opinion.