People who are on the water regularly (guides come to mind) pretty much tie all the time because it is more affordable and they are specifically tying flies for the hatches happening right now on whatever water they are fishing.

If you include vises, tools and materials I am sure I have spent $4K on fly tying gear. I still have a lot of that stuff in storage bins and do use some of it when I break out the tying gear. A lot of it is sunk costs for me at this point but it would take a heck of a lot of fishing to spend that kind of money on flies, even fly shop flies which are not cheap compared to the Sportsman's junk flies.