How much does it cost to paint your house?

We are thinking about getting the house painted by professionals. We saw an interesting product called text-coat at a home show and signed up for an estimate. Last night a sales rep came to our house and gave us a 3 hour demonstration. She told us the history of the product, the advantages, and all the reasons we should buy it. She even had a test kit, and pulled out a few gadgets to show the product's effectiveness. Basically text-coat is a special coating that makes wood stucco or cement water repellent. It is backed by a lifetime guarantee. I felt like I was on an infomercial. Apparently this coating is used by many corporations like Home Depot, McDonald's and even the Hollywood sign because of it's high quality. We didn't get to the price of the product until last. She quoted us $23,000 after measuring our house. Of course there was a special 10% discount if we signed the contract the same day. I was amazed. $23,000 is a lot of money to me to spend on the exterior of the house. Am I out of touch? She said that a professional paint job would run about $4,000-$8,000 and would need to be repeated every 5-10years. My wife and I took some time to talk about it. Then we decided that we have only $10,000 that we could commit to this project because we don't want to finance it and be paying it off for the next 20years at a high interest rate. It puts things in perspective when you think about other things that you are saving for especially a family. We told the sales rep we got $10,000 to spend. She immediately dropped the price to $19,000, then she called her boss to find out about advertising dollars (they would pay us to use before and after pictures as well as putting a sign in our yard for 60 days, we got a bonus because our house is located on a historic street). That brought the price down to $16,500. It was tempting but after talking it over again we stuck to our guns and said $10,000. She wanted us to sign a contract to "hold the price" we refused, and she said to call back by Friday either way. So we spent 3 hours of time listening to this pitch and it was a very impressive product. Unfortunately it costs as much as a car. Maybe in the future when we have more money saved we will go with this option since it has a lifetime guarantee against chipping, fading, or peeling.