Yup Rob, that's part of my love for the M8... amazing lenses in a rather compact size... and it is absolutely what drew me to Pentax initially. Matter of fact, if you noticed I said it in the review on Steve's site... my M8 + 50 Nokton weighs nearly identical to the K-5 + FA43.
I can agree with you that Leica owners seem to be willing to spend money on gear. However, in all fairness, I think a LOT of photographers spend a lot of money on gear (especially those of us online in these types of forums). It's not as if the best bodies from Canon and Nikon are cheap... nor their best lenses. And one difference I've noticed in a big way is the need for a lot of non-Leica users to constantly be upgrading and buying new cameras left and right. GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome - I don't think it's exclusive to the Leica crowd. There doesn't seem to be too much fear to spend money for MOST photographers I come across online... I'd even venture a guess to say they spend as much; the difference may be their desire to buy 10 lenses instead of 2. Some of the lists of lenses I've seen people buy are flat out funny they are so long.
What's always interesting to me is that if someone sets out to "buy the best" and they choose the Nikon D3x, no one says they did it because they must have money to throw away and are merely buying it for status (and trust me, I've met those guys who brag about their big dSLR and how much it cost... they are often bigger snobs than the Leica guys! LOL!). However, you WILL hear that sentiment if someone chooses a Leica M9 (which is actually cheaper by about $1000 - as of today on B&H). Given the choice, I'd pick the M9 any day because of my style of shooting, love of M-Glass and rangefinder shooting in general... it would have nothing to do with status.
So, I often think it's unfair to lump all Leica users, or even most of them, into that group of "snobs with money to blow"... especially on a photography forum. It isn't as if this is a forum about collecting cameras.