Had a friend go through a nasty divorce -- she had a good lawyer, she got the house, he got the mortgage -- said if it came down to buying a Porsche or getting a divorce, go for the Porsche, it will be cheaper .

I was just pointing out that few riders outside of the top of professional racing, have an effectively limitless bike budget, and even they end up having to listen to the team bean counters and team engineers to a large extent. Now for the price of a pretty low end CF bicycle, you can get a pretty high end steel framed one, so the comparison of low end steel to high end CF isn't a fair one. It's a little like comparing a Kia Rio to a Porsche 911 Turbo, and then saying the Porsche is better, well yeah, it's also 8 times the price.