Man, I wish I could get on your level. $200 is mind-boggling to me, especially since the PS5 Pro is not $200 worth of improvements over the base PS5. Spend $200 on ONE dinner for 2?! Yowza!
Maybe it is just cost of living differences from place to place? Because that's not even at a fancy restaurant. I mean, it's not at a Applebees, 99's or Chilis, but its at a regular independent sit down place.
Though to be fair, I did up a little bit.
The cheapest plates on the menu are usually ~$25-$30. If you want steak it's usually at least $50-$60 (unless you want the luxurious super-sized filet mignon, or something, in which case you'll be paying way more) and with steaks, the sides are always separate at anywhere from $8-$18 a pop, depending on what they are...
Get a small appetizer and beer or cocktail or two each while you wait for your food, share a mid-range OK bottle of wine with your food*, and then share a dessert, and have maybe a dessert cocktail or or sip on a scotch, and wham, $140 to $185. Add tip, and you could be over $200.
(***** do they mark up the wine in restaurants. A bottle I'd pay $18 for at the liquor store is usually $60-$70 in a restaurant.)
But yeah. Used to do this once or twice a week before the pandemic and its associated elevated inflation, but since then we got married, bought a house, and everything got more expensive. I'm constantly spending half my paycheck at home depot, and have a hell of a mortgage since we bought in one of the most in-demand markets in the world (greater Boston) in 2021, despite buying a tiny starter home.
So now? Yeah, it's more like once or twice a month.
This year it's been even less. Probably only a handful of times this year, in part because of cost, but also because of a series of home improvement projects that have been all consuming as of late. Earlier in the year I decided to dig and plumb my own sump, and then in May I started a massive DIY HVAC project and pent all of my money and time there for three months.
I've barely even played any games in 2024. I did fire up Civ6 for a little bit the other day, but other than that I haven't really played any game since I finished Starfield late last year. I was going to play Phantom Liberty but I had some issues with controls since the new patch (they changed them, and some seem not to be able to have the bindings changed) which dissuaded me from even trying. That, and while I wanted to enjoy more Cyberpunk story, it is weird to come back to it after having finished the main story. I wish they had integrated the expansion differently somehow. Way to have a high end GPU just depreciate unused, huh?
But yeah, I don't consider a restaurant visit like this to be a super luxurious experience. It's not one of those Michelin star or fency 8-course dinner places where each plate is the size of a ping pong ball in the center of an empty plate. We are talking ordinary independent restaurants, with names like Public Kitchen, Pour House, The Abbey, etc. which is amusing, as these are names cheap restaurants used to have back in the day
Maybe this experience is cheaper in your market. It wouldn't surprise me. Everything is more expensive here. In large part because housing is so expensive, so businesses are forced to pay way more for labor or they won't get employees, because the employees have to be able to live somewhere... And this repeats itself all throughout the supply chain. The rent for the building the restaurant is in, the direct employees at the restaurant (cooks, bartenders, bus boys, cleaning crew, hostess, etc.), the employees who drive the trucks to deliver the foodstuffs and raw materials, the workers in the warehouse where they come from, the warehouse itself....
Everything is driven up in price because of the high cost of real estate.
I've done the math on occasion.
I would earn way less doing my same job in a less in demand market. Like WAY less. In some cases 50-75% of my current salary. But factor in housing and other cost of living, and I'd actually have more money left after subtracting necessities. And I'd likely live in a WAY larger and nicer house, with maybe more money left over for expensive hopbbies (like project cars or a boat)
I've often thought about moving somewhere cheaper, but I have family ties in the area, so I have never quite felt like I can just up and leave.
