Hot take: late-night thoughts on a tight budget [v3]

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping.