Wine is my other hobby/passion. This hobby consumes a serious chunk of my disposable income - likely more than my audio hobby and my system retail is about $20k or so. I guess the term 'upgrade' is not as redily transferable to wine as it is to other hobbies, but in some ways it is. I find it very difficult to 'downgrade' to drinking lower pricepoint wine, once I've become accustomed to the good stuff. I guess it's the same with audio, considering how difficult it is to ever consider a downgrade. In many ways wine is more of an engaging hobby than audio in that every new bottle is a new adventure. Even with the same wine, different vintages offer such variation in experience and quality. Finally, with wine as with audio, the pricepoints can just keep going up - even a recent vintage Chateau Petrus can cost several thousand dollars.