But this situation will come up organically when you are getting started with a client. Everything you do costs money and it is ethical to be transparent about

But this situation will come up organically when you are getting started with a client. Everything you do costs money and it is ethical to be transparent about that. Because the client may not want you to spend thousands on a particular part of the project that they don't actually care about. And there could be an oppurtunity cost in terms of other objectives. Of course there are exceptions to this. Sometimes it makes sense to overprice work because you know the client will uneccessarily nitpick minor details. It makes sense to accomodate this up to a point, but you can't be completely transparent about what it costs. You don't always know how fussy the client will be ahead of time.