To me personally a lot of joy comes from physically playing with the old hardware.... the feel of the keys and working with it... i don't know, but UAE just doesn't do it for me as a real-Amiga-replacement.
I'd say that even with a limited budget a nice A1200 is within financial reach. Just the stock machine with a small HD or CompactFlash adapter will give you a great start again in Amiga world. You can later add an accelerator and VGA scan doubler and still spend less than a good smartphone costs these days ;-)
