I don't care about missing jack, USB-C, cameras and other things - just make it smaller and it will fine by me.
If you are worried about shelling out money, remember that an iPhone 8 isn't $449, it's $449 minus whatever you sell it for in a year (probably not much less). And it's even less if you just buy it used or Apple refurbished in the first place.
The iPhone SE works fine but the screen size is too small for many apps that get scrunched up pretty badly. You’re using a screen size that a very small fraction of Apple users are still using, which means app developers don’t care to make it work nicely for you.
The camera is bad by modern standards, I can see a big difference even for small 4x6 prints, and Touch ID is the slower 1st generation. It's just really old hardware all around.
On the plus side, it has good battery life, a headphone jack, and it's still an iPhone running full iOS.
I have an SE and love it, but this. However, consider the deals out there for something like the 7. Metro PCS has the iPhone 7 for $50, I'm sure there are comparable deals out there too.
I’d also be worried about the 7 audio IC issue.
Price wise an iPhone 7 Renewed on Amazon is only ~$250-260 (128gb) versus an iPhone 8 which is around ~$400 (64gb).
I’ll admit that’s a pretty big price difference but I wonder if that has to do with the 7’s hardware issues making it a phone to stay away from. Or maybe it’s just old and that’s why it’s cheap.
That said, the repair was fairly easy, it was a $30 camera and 20 minutes to repair it.
Software wise it's a perfectly fine device, definitely some limitations, but only because the processor is a four+ year old design. Some SPA or otherwise heavy webpages cause it to choke (ex: it hates USAToday), but 99% of what I try to do works great. Per Apple and MacRumours, the SE will get iOS 13. No idea how well that will run, but we'll see.
If you can get one in good shape to hold you over you'll probably be happy with it.
Before that it would die in ~2hrs and instantly die in high heat.