Uber-luxury mattress: $59, 750. Luscious organic cashmere bed linens: $3,899. Years of great sleep: Priceless.

Maybe, but how many of us can afford good sleep when it comes with such a staggering price tag?

Earlier today, I came across a CNN article about the booming trend toward luxury mattresses. The $50,000+ mattress is an extreme example, but the high-end bed craze is exploding. People are now seeking out luxury beds made from materials such as latex, flax, memory foam, silk, cashmere, lambswool, and hand-tufted horse hair. (Trust me, if I had an extra $20,000 handy, I'd be all over this.)

Meanwhile, it's increasingly common for people to spend upwards of $1,000 for premium, pillow-topped mattresses from well-known national brands. The sales pitch for high-end beds is simple: We spend a third of our lives in bed, so we might as well treat ourselves.

This idea is further propelled by our country's high insomnia rate. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a whopping 30 percent of us struggle with insomnia. Factor in back trouble, weight gain, chronic crankiness, and other problems associated with poor sleep, and it makes sense to splurge on a better bed.

The promise is that a great bed will work when other sleep remedies (chamomile tea, dull books, exhausting workouts, calming meditation, prescription drugs, counting endless flocks of sheep, etc., etc.) fail to help us drift off.

It's hard to argue with the merits of a great bed. After a recent bout with insomnia and worsening tenderness around my spine and my lower back, I decided that it was time to buy a better bed.

But instead of investing in a premium mattress, I decided to "downsize" back to a $199 futon. I'd slept extremely well on futons for 15 years. Then a few years ago, I purchased a basic mattress (the totally average $500 kind) and have suffered more insomnia and back tenderness ever since.

So, I decided to return to my humble, college-kid roots. Fortunately, the new futon looks like a regular bed, courtesy of a platform-style bed-frame. And since buying it, I've slept like a baby -- or at least as well as any zonked-out college-kid.

But I still plan to splurge on some luscious, outrageously expensive organic bed linens soon. After all, we're talking about a third of our lives and there is nothing wrong with treating ourselves luxuriously whenever we can afford it.