One option if you go with an electric is to buy a headphone amp rather than a cheap regular amp. Playing with headphones is a really luscious experience.

I highly recommend against anything that uses your phone. Go old school with a standalone unit. A used Korg Toneworks Pandora PX4 goes for about $100. There may be new standalone devices too, but this particular model is one I have and really like.

Anything that links to your phone is going to be outdated and useless before long.

Justin Guitar has a good free course find him on You Tube and you can pay for more if you wish.

A MIM Strat or a higher end Squire (gold decal) are good budget starter guitars for electric.

The Katana is a great amp, but you may not need all that until you can make use of it, so a cheap used practice amp may be good enough for starters and help you stay in budget.

https://dallas.craigslist.org/...ster/7610881718.html

https://dallas.craigslist.org/...-mim/7601737956.html

https://dallas.craigslist.org/...nity/7610931982.html

that last one has everything you need to get started, and you can upgrade as you learn, a great starter kit w a decent amp for the $

I did this just a few months ago. I went to Sam Ash and bought Gio Ibanez electric guitar and Spider V20 amp. They were right at $400.

I recently bought a Cort SFX series thin cutaway for under 250. Very nice playing acoustic guitar. It came from Guitar Center.

Thank you everyone for your advice, I am hoping to get something soon and will definitely post up pictures when I do! I am very excited about all this.

As others have said, the hard part you have to earn, practice practice practice,
Getting the muscle memory and calluses takes time and patients.