If it's for personal use, buy cheap until you know what you like/want. Then splurge if you can afford it and want to "upgrade".

Fundamentally, for personal use, you will see little difference in performance between a 50$ knife and a 1000$ knife.

As was pointed out in some other comments, the Voctorinox chef knife is a solid pick. It's sharp, easy to sharpen when needed, good size, durable, and it's a beater so oyu don't feel bad for damagind it a bit. I'd start with that, then expand as you need other stuff. For me even a good pairing knife s hardly necessary, you can do most of it with a chef knife anyway once you're comfortable with it in a personal setting.

What I would also recommend though, is getting a two faced sharpening stone like 1000/6000 grit. Learning to sharpen your own knives will make a world of difference, the most expensive knife you can get is garbo if it's not sharp. It's also quite fun to sharpen knives imo.

You train for years, practice your spins, hurt yourself endlessly falling on the ice.

One day your dream comes true, your agent calls you, 2lawd do we have a gig for you".

I respect anyone willing to show up at a date with a pelican around his/her neck tbf.