It all comes down to subjective choices, neither direction would be "wrong".
It does make it more tough that you've got sunken costs into the old bike with recent changes.
Do you have a friend your size that you could give the old bike to, and have them pay for parts, and you could show/help him to wrench it?
You could maybe do better than $150 if you found a cheaper donor bike on CL to get parts from, although I'm guessing the CL bike market is not as rich in SD (south dakota) as it is here in SD (san diego)...