What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.

To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.

Ordering dinner from across the country overnight isn't spending $200 on a Valentine's dinner, though, it's spending $200 on leftovers.

This is what I appreciate about Magic, by the way. I simply asked for food from the restaurant, specifying that leftovers were fine. Chilled overnight didn't even occur to me; I did not have any idea at the time how they might accomplish it, and I was prepared to be told it was impossible (or insanely expensive).

They figured out that chilled overnight delivery was possible, and got a local service to handle the logistics of picking it up from the restaurant, packing it into the box, and shipping it. It turned out rather nicely, and not nearly as expensive as I expected. It's not even really that much work and effort, when all is said and done.

It's a shame the downward pressures that have made "struggling to get by" the middle class norm. The whole point of the thriving middle class (in the US at least) was that, with a willingness to work, you could live comfortably, with a house and two cars and 2 kids.

This isn't meant to be insulting or directed at you - it's just a new definition of middle class, that the struggle builds character or your struggling is an indicator of your value or lack of hard work, that I find almost infuriating.

End rant, I suppose.

I wouldn't consider myself rich either, but I do fairly well for myself as an unmarried guy in his 20s, and there are some friends that in some situations I wouldn't hesitate at all to spend a few hundred dollars on them. Some of them have done the same for me.

If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.

>If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.

I mean, that's what I'm talking about. I've never felt like my ability to splurge massively (e.g. buying a ticket at an airport to go on a suddenly planned trip) was impaired by my frivolous $50 purchases whenever I felt like it. I may not buy moderately expensive stuff without even considering whether I actually will use it (so maybe I'm not as rich as I think) but I don't have to even consider stuff like expensive taxi rides or bullshit novelty experiences when I'm bored.

Of course there are plenty of people for who this is reasonable, but please don't be so ignorant of what "middle class" means.

[1] http://visual.ly/how-average-american-family-spends-money

And some people are a bit more generous than that. Or only have 1-2 friends that they go "all out" for. Small $20-40 gifts for a few friends/coworkers and 1-2 $200-300 gifts for the close friends lines up with your estimate just fine. Especially since they said could afford to and not will do so.

I'm middle class and spent three times the average you cited because I budgeted it accordingly for the last year. This year was atypical, but was very much possible.

You don't need to be upper middle class to afford a one off large purchase. Maybe if you're struggling in the lower ends of the working class - it could be difficult. I don't see where you're finding fault with their statement... if anything you're supporting it.

When I learned that the original business had been rebuilt and re-established, I thought I'd put together an extra special surprise for her birthday this year.

What was special about this birthday present was it seemed like an impossible feat, on first impression, and she had no idea how I did it. That's why what Magic did was so magical. Imagine having for your birthday dinner food from your favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, from a restaurant 2000 miles away, that you thought had burned down! Entirely unexpected and quite delicious!

I don't know many lower-middle class people who'd buy what will likely end up being just shy of a thousand dollar present for their friends.

Shipping rates are significantly reduced if you do high volume - if Magic does a lot of shipping (and it sounds like they would, with the services they offer), they could probably negotiate a far lower rate than you could.

It ends up being something a few times more expensive as a night out at the restaurant, so it's not cheap, and you don't get the ambiance, but my wife is very attached to memories, so the touch of "somewhere we visited on a romantic trip" is quite nice, and more appreciated than e.g. jewelry that might be as or more expensive.

This being the case, all Magic is really doing here is helping you find out which restaurants will ship, and perhaps making some phone calls to arrange shipments that aren't advertised.

Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.

(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)

Hell, we were asked to take some pastries from our city roughly 700 kms home for family on Christmas, and although we carefully packed them, stored them with freezer-blocks in an insulated container, and carried them completely supervised on our lap in an aircraft cabin the entire way, they arrived worse for wear...but still kinda presentable and edible.

If I hired this out to an overnight courier for $100, + $100 for magic, + $100 for food, i wouldn't be half surprised to find it had been forcefully jammed into my letter box or met with handling/turbulence during transportation...

UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".

All this rounding down is the difference between "a few hundred" and likely "just shy of a thousand dollars". A few hundred in shipping, a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese", the time for the service. Etc.

I used FedEx overnight for a 5lb package, which came to less than $100.

> a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese"

I'd assumed a meal for 2-4 people at most, thus roughly $50-100.

> the time for the service

Given foreknowledge of the services needed to put together such a request, that should take a small fraction of an hour; 15-30 minutes, so $25-$50.

Put all of that together, plus the chilled packaging, and $300-400 seems like a reasonable estimate. Both of us made many assumptions based on lack of data.

Still, UPS at 5lb from NY to SF Next Day Air Early is still $150+.

If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.

2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.

Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.

I think we've both relied on our own local price scales here. I don't live in San Francisco; here, $25 per person will generally get you any entrée and dessert on the menu, from anywhere other than a high-end steakhouse or similar.

And in any case, I was making the assumption that the selection of meal was driven more by some specific shared nostalgia than by five-star cuisine. If anything, I'd be less inclined to attempt to ship the latter, since quality would suffer more from transit than nostalgia would.

> 2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.

I don't think you can even ship dry ice via normal shipping processes; it falls under "hazardous substances". The couple of times I've had chilled items shipped (http://www.spokandy.com/product/murphys/ , highly recommended), they arrived packed in gel-like sealed "ice"packs, still cold to the touch.

> Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.

Indeed!

Going back to the original point, the examples given on the homepage for this service certainly target people with seven-figure salaries. But I could imagine people using it for somewhat saner purposes while having "just" a high-five-figure/low-six-figure salary.