Agreed! Don't spend at first. Reuse an old computer. See if you like doing this!

@audricd @salarua I second this. If you're starting, an unused computer (laptop, desktop, raspberry pi or other single board computer, whatever) you already have is perfect. Or an old computer a friend gives you, or eventually a cheap second hand computer.
You can do A LOT with very little computing resources

For the most part, yes. Some things, like SIEMs, IDPSs, machine learning (GPT, Stable Diffusion, etc.), and other such processing-heavy things should be taken into consideration and "fed" properly.

I don’t recommend hosting your own email server, as it’s very labor-intensive to keep your emails out of people’s spam folders.

i'm not going to use this email server for real-name business, and i'll likely only be emailing people who contact me first. that said...good point

May I ask, why not an rPi? Is it because of the unreasonable prices?

ideological differences, i guess. i used to trust them right up until they hired that surveillance professional and shut down everyone who told them that that was a bad idea