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Actually I think if you organize well your mix you don't even need good plugins, it's all about cutting and keeping lows and highs under control. The mid/side stuff starts to step into overproducing.

also interpret how you would but I might allegedly not have payed for the Fabfilter plugins I use. (I'll say it was a gift of the entire catalog from a facebook friend, just to be safe 👀) and the Volcano is handy but it's not all that. I prefer VCV Rack's enormous free selection of user-submitted plugins, ripe for complex modulation (the vcv vst still runs you a 150ish payment). The Fabfilter desert island plugins to me are Saturn and Pro-MB, maybe pro-G. All the rest I could easily give up and replace. I can replace Pro-MB and Pro-G with FL's Maximus in a pinch.

My modular journey began just making all sorts of fart noises and experiments on the Neutron, then adding the SQ-1 sequencer, then adding accidentally two volca modulars borrowing my friend's mixer, and occasionally borrowing my friend's DrumBrute. That quartet is the OG Jon Patch sound, if you dig into my soundcloud's depths. That and VCV Rack. I love the feel of playing analog stuff, but my favourite module ever is Monsoon and that's digital. I love digital.

I have always been too poor to fall fully into GAS. I have been growing my synth for 4-5 years on dish-washing salary, my modules are mostly under 150€ each, my guitar pedals rarely exceed 30€. I got the Deep Mind used for under 400€.

On this soundtrack the Neutron does the heavy lifting, sequenced by the affordable Korg SQ-1 and the older model Doepfer MIDI module I got for 60 bucks. 

If you haven't, get your hands on the Zoom Multistomp CDR pedal!!! It's less than 100 bucks NEW, and you can change its list of effects from the other Multistomp pedals with a particular PC software. I have imitations of guitar amps, insane reverbs, compressors,  distortions... Punches too far above its weight. You can build an ambient career with that pedal's reverbs and anything that makes sound! (not a salesman I swear). Best compulsive buy of my life. I sold my actual crappy guitar amp to save space since I use the pedal's amps instead.

I did get me a JHS 3 series fuzz to feel the authentic analog fuzz - awesome pedal, playing guitar into it is lovely. It is very cool for distortion send on analog tekno jams, the way it crunches and gates when bias is tweaked.

Okay sorry!! I am the kind of person to drop walls of text when I get into it. The quiet and lonely, waiting to burst out type. the point is, don't spend unless you really want to. Use the shittiest EQ and compressor in well-organized buses, and cut the lows by default. My biggest breakthroughs were glue compression (MJUC is great), the compressed and gated sub bus, and the parallel distortion bus with high and low cuts. And keeping reference peak levels at each stage. You can do very silly stuff on a good bus structure. Also try VCV Rack!