Why the meta for newcomers [v2]

This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.

For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks.