In 20 years of home recording, I have paid for exactly one VSTi, EZ Drummer. I have never paid for a single VST. I have no pirated plugins. There are so many excellent freeware plugins as well as those that are bundled with hardware or DAW or Electronic Musician cover DVDs, that I've never had a lack of inspiring tones and processing to pick from.
I've never had a single listener say upon listening: Wow, you must be using freeware or mag-ware.
In fact, I've had quite the opposite comments.
What this has afforded me:
1. Money to buy a top-shelf acoustic guitar (Larrivée)
2. Money to purchase a couple different bass guitars, one really cheap, and one not-so cheap
3. Money to purchase excellent amp simulator/multi-fx units for both my electric guitars and both of my basses.
4. Money to upgrade my controller keyboard to have drawbar controls for the VB3 VSTi plugin I won in one of KVRAudio's songwriting contest.
5. Money to have a small selection of condenser and dynamic mics.
6. Money to eventually break-down and buy EZ Drummer and some additional loops.
I had to learn to play bass along the way. I tried for years to get midi bass to sound decent, and I finally heard a plugin/sampler package that was up to the task - Spectrasonics Trilian. It still costs $299. That would have cost me more than the first bass and bass amp simulator. And I would have to learn the nuances of how to try to fake electric bass parts on it; or learn how to play bass in a believable way. I chose the latter and I'm very glad that I did.
I have tried to take the same path with drums. I even sort of had lessons by taking my son to his lessons each week and learning snare rudiments, practiced on a pad. I could not make it past lesson 3 rudiments. No matter how hard I tried. I got by mostly with loops from Computer Music DVDs. Finally bought EZ Drummer earlier this year (very happy with that purchase).
My suggestion: Go to
www.kvraudio.com search the plugin database for freeware and most popular search filters. Grab the top five synth and top 5 effect plugins. Make sure to check the 'free' choice for pricing, and order the results by 'user rating'.
https://www.kvraudio.com/q.phpLearn them. Study how they work. Learn signal processing fundamentals through Berklee's free Music Production course.
You will have years of enjoyment with just those 10 plugins.
I have probably a couple hundred plugins I've collected over the years, but I use only 10-20 regularly because I know them deeply.