Anyone else budget options — am I overthinking this? [v4]

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. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping.

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.