It seems easier to optimize because you're starting out so far away from the goal, so you have a lot of space to improve. The money you mostly end up "saving" i

It seems easier to optimize because you're starting out so far away from the goal, so you have a lot of space to improve. The money you mostly end up "saving" is money that you didn't really need to spend in the first place, but you chose to spend more instead of going through the optimizing effort up-front (which can be a perfectly valid approach).