Reminder that the latest update for newcomers [v2]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.

Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.