The conversation was about the expense of going on vacation. You then said that you went on a business trip (not vacation), and that the cheapest fare plus a cheap hotel was more than $1000. They replied that they went on vacation (more relevant than business travel) for $100. That is, they supplied a counter-data-point to your data point.

Then they pointed out that both your data point and theirs were anecdotes (I guess that's what a single data point is), rather than actual data.

So their point was that they have experience that contradicts yours, and that neither their experience nor yours does anything to advance the conversation, because they're both just anecdotes.

As I said, I thought that was very obvious from their post.

So, we're back at Jensson's post from a day ago, with both you and IAmBroom having supplied contradictory anecdotes, and neither having supplied any data. So, do you want to add some data?

Actually, the conversation was more generally about the mentality of chronically broke people, but as often happens on HN, one reply fixated on a single word (or number in this case), lost the forest for the trees, and derailed the whole topic.

I get that anecdotes aren’t data, but the way it was phrased came off a bit snarky. I’m happy to share my experience without turning this into a debate.