You can do it. The trick is to see that your final turntable, years away, won't have any of the same parts in it. You'll upgrade in the best bang-for-the-buck order and at one point the cartridge will go, the arm will go and the turntable will go, replaced with something better.
I like a Goldring GL-1 or GL-2 or a Rega for tweaking. At your budget level you'll have to find it used. There are lots of little bits and pieces you can get on eBay for making the motor quieter, damping the bearing shaft, and so on. You can upgrade the stock cartridge. You can rewire the tone arm, then shift arm and cartridge to a better table later.
You can't easily sell the original tone arm, even rewired, so when you replace it with a new and better arm, you shift the rewired arm back to the original table and then sell the old table plus arm and cart as a unit.
Voilà, an upgrade track for a turntable that's "too cheap to tweak".
I like a Goldring GL-1 or GL-2 or a Rega for tweaking. At your budget level you'll have to find it used. There are lots of little bits and pieces you can get on eBay for making the motor quieter, damping the bearing shaft, and so on. You can upgrade the stock cartridge. You can rewire the tone arm, then shift arm and cartridge to a better table later.
You can't easily sell the original tone arm, even rewired, so when you replace it with a new and better arm, you shift the rewired arm back to the original table and then sell the old table plus arm and cart as a unit.
Voilà, an upgrade track for a turntable that's "too cheap to tweak".