Bar for participating in PokemonVGC kinda high

I wanted to pick up a hobby that could take me travelling and chose PokemonVGC thanks to youtube feeds. After watching for 2 years my interest was piqued enough to take action to buy Brand new Switch and physical copy of Scarlet. I wanted to just participate in regionals then go tourist mode in that city, if I manage to get enough CP I could even soak in the hype of Worlds. I expected the switch and game to be the whole expense for game-wise but it was just the beginning, to have access to the full pokemon pool I needed to buy both Scarlet and Violet and their DLC, that's 2 x games and 2 x dlc, 4 items sold separately on top of the Switch. There's also a subscription cost for playing online, it was nothing too expensive compared to the base cost but I was just surprised by them, from when I last played Y casually on 3DS. I searched and stumbled on reddit and learned if I wanted the entire Pokemon pool practically and able react to changes in format with any time left in real life, I needed 2 switches. I could choose to throw more money in, or I could sell the OLED to get a clean brand new lite, a second hand gen 1 for cheap and Amazon for soldering kit with some money to spare. The handiwork I had to do afterwards is a stark buzzkill from the excitement of first unboxing the Brand new Oled and Scarlet. I might not have taken action on the interest in VGC and might've let it stayed what it was if I had the full picture of the legitimate costs that we are expected to put in, money and time-wise, legitimately.