Maybe you really can't afford it, but given the job opportunities this is a bit like saying that you can't afford college. The cost with all 5 decompilers is about $15,000. That is comparable in cost to a semester of college. It might be a better deal if you bother to really learn the tool.
I guess there aren't student loans for IDA, but there definitely is employment. Once you become competent with IDA, you can apply for jobs like these at my workplace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153 Being competent means you can navigate around in a binary without symbols, that you can mentally convert assembly to C, and generally that you can find things of interest in the binary and understand them.
Binary Ninja (binja) is $149 from Vector35. That might be optimal for you.
I guess there aren't student loans for IDA, but there definitely is employment. Once you become competent with IDA, you can apply for jobs like these at my workplace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153 Being competent means you can navigate around in a binary without symbols, that you can mentally convert assembly to C, and generally that you can find things of interest in the binary and understand them.
Binary Ninja (binja) is $149 from Vector35. That might be optimal for you.