thank you very much! such a huge help!!

wow... never even thought about the ebay route!! thank you so much!

For those of you that have answered and told me i need to spend more i was just wondering your input on this device, granted its only 500 dollars over my budget but i cant go that much higher than that..
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1190340-REG/apple_z0rs_mk45216_bh_...

Specs:
1 TB Fusion Drive
16GB RAM
3.3 GHz Intel Core i7

Thank you to everyone, all of this is a huge help

At the moment i am just working in 1080p but as you said future proofing myself would be a good idea, and currently myself and a friend are working on shorter/personal projects as well as a 40-60 min documentary (with hopes to expand to more feature type length films in the future) so the work load isn't exactly light. I have never worked with DaVinci before but it is my understanding that if u want to properly grade your film that is the software to use.

thank you guys! really appreciate it!

Thank you all for the help! truly is appreciated