You've actually got that backwards - being wealthy makes your time and effort worth more (to you) than the half-hour you'd spend price-comparing every item in the cart for each price difference (each between $0.03 and $2.00), while being poor makes price comparisons much more worth it

Being more financially stable means you pay higher prices, in this scenario

Right, which would imply that a VPN that makes you look broke would help get you better prices.

Haha, no no no. I don't trust this to be true. Everyone will pay more or else the investment into this technology doen't break even.