Did you drop all that money the second you got into the hobby or did you wade in the water a bit to see if ya liked it? Big differences there, and the relevance to this post hinges on your answer.
I did research a bunch of communities and YouTube videos of people’s sim rigs first and how the games worked. Then decided if I got into the games I wouldn’t really enjoy them without some hardware (wheel/pedals) which turned out to be the case. And yeah didn’t get all the hardware I now use all at once and plan on some future upgrades like a stand to mount everything. Kinda like how flight sim players prefer their own sticks if that makes sense.