Guys,
Ever wake up alone with a hangover and that terrible feeling of " I could have bought that new stick for the price of last night"? Well, me neither. 
Im the guy who says Entretainment Costs money. Now im not asking you to trade experiences and memories for hardware butā¦ For what seems a small price, I have collected a bunch of hardware over the years. I cant put a price on some things i.e. my pedals used to get cracked every year( CH pedals). My Slaw Device pedals have 5 years on them with never a glitch. The sweetest things in life cost money. Since youre going to spend it anyway get good stuff.
This is not a from when i started flying, this is the stuff i have now. The point is, ive spent less than 3k. That dont buy you a decent street bike anymore. And yet this stuff has provided me years of smiles. The memories and experiences are in there too.
60 USD TM MFD. SEPT 2011
472 USD WT SET. JAN 2012
500 USD Slaw device pedals. AUG 15
465 USD WT SET. FEB 2017
238 USD WT THROTTLE. AUG 2017
75 USD TM MFD. SEPT 2018
332 USD VIRPIL BASE. JUN 20
270 USD VIRPIL MONGOOSE/MOUNT/MOUSE PAD. JUN20
90 USD VIRPIL COVERS/KEY BOARD ADAPTER. SEPT 2020
229 USD TM F-18 GRIP. FEB 2020
320 USD WW F-16 THROTTLE JULY 22
NOT YET DELIVERED
300 USD WW KA-50 COLLECT AUG 22
403 USD WW F-18 THROTTLE AUG 22
Will you ship to US?
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Wholeheartedly agreed with your point. I compare my sim hobby to my grandparents generation with model railroads. Two patriarchs in my family tree had entire rooms in their homes devoted to their HO gauge layouts. Untold money over the course of their lives, on an entertaining hobby. Thereās nothing wrong with that, and it sure beats hard drinking.
Waitā¦what??!! (hic)
Itās comparable to home theater costs. Real HT people donāt buy $600 big TVs, you spend $2k or more!
Then there are other things like the speakers, receivers, and players that cost $500+/each easy.
A buddy is building a theater room and the projection screen is over $8k. Way too rich for my blood. I can go watch a lot of movies in the theater with a full-size popcorn and coke for that kind of money.
I donāt want to know what I have spend on DCS over the years 
Not as bad as my GAS when it comes to camera gear but still a pretty large chunk of money probably close to 10k ā¦
Diminishing returns. My eyes and ears arenāt good enough where I can see the difference between $3k and $8k, or hear the difference between a $1k and $5k receiver.
When I see a $500 TV with a $100 soundbar, thoughā¦oh yeah, thatās not nearly good enough.
Iām pretty well trained in TVs and have minor audio experience. In my house I really like my moderate size OLED TV and my mediocre sound bar. I usually donāt want to be immersed in content and blasted with rumbling sound while I watch TV or a film at home. So I get the diminishing returns more than anyone.
But thatās the deal. I do like stuff. I like objects and things. Especially when they mean something to me. Things that are built or designed with care, things that are better than the competition because of good design and good craftsmanship. Things that I just got in funny unexpected ways (all legal).
A very nice way of making sure everything I own means something to me is to only keep the essential. I got into that conclusion when I realized I have 6 different guitars in my house. Iām donating 3 of them in the next few weeks. I used to own 3 bikes, now, just my trusty moser.
I also recently downgraded from a more complex setup with desk mounts, MFDs with working screens button boxes and all the bells and whistles to just a hotas desk setup plus a streamdeck. I just unplug the hotas from my desk when Iām not using. My office now just have the regular desk of a non-psycho. I love this new order so much that I actually bought the virpil stuff and will be upgrading from my trusty TM. More versatility built right into the hotas, and less stuff around it. Investing in fewer of the better stuff.
If I knew starting up Iād be doing this for as long as I have, I would have skipped many intermediate solutions and only gotten the best from the start, but Iād never think Iād be still invested in the same simulators 5-6 years later. (I still need to get rid of my TM T.Flight, my G940 kit and my old - and in need of revision - CH pedals, and plan on selling my warthog set locally after the new toys arive)
So in terms of cost that can sum up to some high numbers, but I enjoyed every little piece of that while I used them, and surely feel everything was more than worth it.
I guess I donāt mind the journey, but I mind the clutter. So from now on, less stuff, better stuff. That way, every little piece has meaning.
Good sound and loud sound are not synonymous. Frankly a simple sound bar is more than capable of making your ears bleed if thatās all you want.
In fact I have my sound balanced for the loudest parts of what Iām watching, which means when itās just people talking it can be hard to hear. Iāve come to rely on subtitles for that over constantly turning the volume up and down when action happens. 
I spent $2000 on 5.1 speakers almost 20 years ago and still use them. I did spend like $300 on a pair of upward-firing Atmos speakers about 5 years back, but likewise they arenāt going anywhere. I upgrade my receiver about every 5 years. First I went from the old sound-only to one with HDMI, then I had to upgrade to one that could handle 3D Bluray, and finally handle 4K.
I literally feel surrounded by the sound without my ears having to hurt.
Yeah man, I donāt get it why those TV audio devices donāt have a compressor we can manually apply. Even old Hi-Fi had loudness controls for different dynamics.
Sadly Iām one of those people that actually want to hear the actors, I make a living by watching and validating actors perform and I like to analyze the performances up close. So I get a call from a neighbor every other action scene lol.
Absolutely, I get in a theatre where the director can spec how they want things to sound. In my living room let me have a min and max loudness dang it.
@taubkin What do you do for a living if you donāt mind me ask?
Iām a film director! 
Oh, now thatās a cool gig!
Not fighter pilot cool, but better partiesā¦ 
Hey we are friends right?
Please tell me you share my disdain for a film like Jurassic Shark!
Careful, he might be the guy in the credits!
Or in the credits for āSharknadoā, another wonderful classy film.
The difference is Sharknado was made to be a campy, over-the-top, B-level (at best) schlocky film.
It took nothing seriously. Take it for what it is and itās stupid fun for 90 mins.
By comparison, Jurassic Shark seemed to have delusions of adequacy. They knew they had a tiny budget, a cast who couldnāt act, a script that was based on 3rd grade science (imagine if an oil company drilled into a pocket of ice from 65 million years ago and unfroze a megalodon!) and written by a dropout, but still thought they could accomplish something on the strength ofā¦I donāt know, prayer? Weed? Head trauma?
I mean The Room is bad, but itās still VERY entertaining because of the ways in which it is bad. Things Tommy thought were clever foreshadowing or subtext are instead as subtle as a ninja in a mascot costume slaughtering both teams at the 50 yrd line at the Superbowl. Thatās what makes it so-bad-itās-good.
I went through my stuff this weekend. I have given away a MSFFB2 and one was destroyed by myself. So down to one of them. I still have too much TM stuff. Today i got my second WinWing Throttle. The handles took the long road here along w the collectiveā¦ The Bug and Ka-50 are going to get some love soon.