I learned to sew on my Mom's Singer Touch N Sew.
When I got married and started making clothes for my girls, my mom and dad bought me a cheap $80 Singer. I used that for about 20 years and ended up giving it away. It needed a HUGE cleaning and that was going to cost me about $100, so didn't feel I needed to pay that. I did have a Kenmore standby that I used. That one is probably about 15 years old and works great too!
My main machine is a Kenmore Ergo3. It retailed at the time for almost $2000 and I got it for about 1/2 that. What I liked was that it had the embroidery machine built in as well, so I "bit the bullet" and bought it. I just love it! I've had it for about 4 years now and it's going great!