Best common pitfalls that nobody talks about [v5]

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.

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

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. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.