That is, buy something good enough that it doesn’t make you miserable when you’re just starting out. A lot of $80 guitars are absolutely miserable, or will be miserable shortly after you take them home.
> It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic.
Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. They’re also not the cheapest guitars you can get. The cheapest guitars you can get are around $80, have high action, don’t stay in tune, and my experience is that you have good odds of getting cut by the fret wire or seeing the neck warp at some point after you take the guitar home.
That’s all I’m talking about—between “made as cheaply as possible” and “no expenses spared” there is this vast middle ground of “decent price/quality tradeoff”.
I’m by no means an expert on guitars—but I do have a small guitar maintenance kit, and I help out friends or colleagues set up their guitars to make them a bit more comfortable and playable. I’ve seen too many “cheap as possible” guitars where my conclusion is that the guitar is unplayable and it’s just beyond my ability to make it playable.