Anyone else budget options — am I overthinking this?

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.

Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.