one fear I gots is that the day of reckoning might be coming... by that I mean if all the big spend, easy avenues / closed loops dry up -- AND min spend remains at the stubbornly high threshold that it's currently at as some sort of new normal, then lots of folks are gonna be SOL.

these days $5k, $10k even $20k is no big deal and can be done in a cpl days... but imagine having to actually put in some effort to spend $10k even in 3 months :/