True, but "affordable" also doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as "cheapest." I believe in bottom-up budgeting. You don't look at the money you have and arbitrarily decide how much you'll spend. Instead you look at what you need to get done, spec out how good the equipment has to be in order to achieve those results, factor in an impression of the quality necessary to have it keep functioning at top performance until you're likely to want to replace it, and select some candiates from there. In other words, try to answer the question "how good to I need it to be for the use I have in mind?" Only after you come up with a list of candidates do you start to look at costs, how much capital do I need to allocate to meet my requirements. Looking at the problem in that way might result in the lowest priced "affordable" mic being a Rode at $200 or a Schoeps at $2000 or something in between. But buying cheap with the idea of upgrading later is almost always the most expensive way of all to approach the problem.
