Has anyone tried late-night thoughts on a tight budget [v5]

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.