mshenay said:

  You do get it's the running joke here right? Not every member is "broke" the humor is in the fact that you'll start budgeting your money to afford more cans, resulting in an empty wallet, empty as in, "WELP all my bills are paid, kids are fed, wife's happy and I got a new pair of cans..." 

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It's a running joke, yes, but neither did I mean that a lot of people might literally be going broke. My point was that it actually got to the point of being a running joke because there is truth to the excessive spending. Bills might be paid, wife is happy, but what the kids eat? Sodium and preservatives-laden budget food you get in crates or with coupons. Wife's happy? On top of having bought two $1,500 headphones plus a $1,500 IEM and whatever the wife wanted, did you put away enough money for the kids' college expenses for this month? Do you have any stock market let alone real estate investments? If you need a car to get to work, are you sure you go extra cash in case some schmuck smashes your car and you can get another one in case insurance won't cover it?
 
Personally if you're not keeping  at least 30% for investments and savings you're technically broke - any major catastrophe that insurance won't cover will hit really hard.

protegemaniac said:

   
It's a running joke, yes, but neither did I mean that people might literally be going broke. My point was that it actually got to the point of being a running joke because there is truth to the excessive spending.

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There is truth to the risk of evcessive spending, but that exists with any hobby 

mshenay said:

  There is truth to the risk of evcessive spending, but that exists with any hobby 

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And neither did I mean to single out audio over other hobbies, it just so happens that this is particularly what we are discussing here. For every audiophile blowing money on the FOTM there has to be at least one person elsewhere buying a new graphics card every two years, except of course there will be a quantifiable increase in framerates at higher graphics settings (doesn't mean I would be so quick to upgrade myself) as opposed to a cumulative sidegrade headphone zoo (on the flipside, the headphone would still have better resale value ten years later than an obsolete graphics card).
 
Again, all I'm saying is that one doesn't need to be so quick to pull the trigger especially if the equipment can turn out redundant (having two headphones and one IEM vs one headphone and one IEM for example), nor nitpicking at every detail that only fuels such spending (the $10,000 power cable I mentioned is of course an extreme example).