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

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go.