PSA: budget options on a tight budget [v5]

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.