There's very little correlation to rates vs performance, so there's no real reason not to go downmarket if you're a little strapped. The difference tends to be in environment and occasionally but not always somewhat on looks, but there's little or no correlation to looks vs. performance either. Men always seem to think that booking a dime will result in way better sex and a better experience, and that's simply categorically untrue. The basis for spending your cash should always be performance and attituide rather than looks, 100% of the time. Of course, everyone's standard is different, and there's always a minimum level of attraction for each guy, but there's always a scale to work with, and what's objectively more attractive usually costs more without necessarily being any better. I think the guys that only chase eye candy are cheating themselves, but hey, that's just my two cents. Similar services are available all up and down the line unless you're getting into some of the specialty kinks.
So, go downmarket, go less often, or go somewhere else. Montreal is my home town, and I love the city, but I've lived in a bunch of places, and I know it shortcomings as far as mongering goes. When I started mongering it was here, picking up SWs on the street at a relatively tender age. I have since run the gamut of types of places all over the world and have come to understand that there's a lot of ways of doing things. The disappearance of SWs pushed everything upmarket a bit, but not everything and not entirely. As wolfie mentioned, the system is either breaking or broke here now, depending on who you talk to, relative to what it used to be. It is what it is. That doesn't mean that fun can't be had here, but it's not the same. Yes, I know some guys are going to come storming in here to say that's it's just as vibrant and fun and crazy as it ever was, blah, blah,blah, but it's just not, by any objective measure. This is true of a lot of places, actually, including some of my old favorite haunts. Things change. If you don't have to always indulge yourself then you can only indulge yourself occasionally here and spend your cash elsewhere in more concentrated but separated doses. Without taking travel costs into account I can monger for a week all day and night, with sex, social time, drinks, company, conversation and massages for what a 2hr session costs here. The service offering abroad is so far superior abroad to what it is here that it feels bad to come home sometimes, but hey, again it is what it is. Wolfie said he likes Europe better, but I tend to prefer latin america or Asia over Europe too. Notice I don't say that the women are better people or better looking, necessarily, but simply that the culture differences allow for a better service experience abroad. So, if you can limit your mongering to a handful of times a year then even including travel costs it's cheaper and better to travel, with perhaps an occasional indulgence here, plus you get that vacation feeling and you get to hang around with lots of like-minded guys in many of the more popular places, which you can't really here. That's a really big bonus if you've never experienced it before. If you can't travel or don't have the time then obviously this isn't for you. If you're American and drinking in the benefits of foreign exchange then maybe what Canadians are complaining about doesn't apply because of the relative currency value.
No matter what, there are a great variety of options that can be explored, even just locally. The guys here seem to like to compare agency rates as a go-to measure of relative cost, but agencies are far from the only option here locally too. You just need to open up your mind a little to explore some other possibilities.
