In many ways, that's a very good question on a lot of different levels. The corollary may well be, "How did I Get Here?". In many cases, studios just kinda grow, without direction, or planning. We wind up with stuff we should have never bought, and stuff we still need, or "think" we still need. Not to mention the stuff we want, but is out of our price range for the foreseeable future (i.e., probably never).
So this forum is gonna be about cute tricks, and stuff that will get you by for cheap for now, till you can afford the better stuff. It's about doing the best you can with what you have, or at least finding out how you can get close to what you want for a minimum outlay. As a bottom feeder, I'm always on the lookout for stuff that's cheap, but pretty good. Sometimes you hafta bite the bullet and spend the bucks, but every so often, there's a cheaper way that'll get you close to what you want.
My forum is gonna be pretty wide ranging, covering everything from acoustics, to gear selection, to recording tips, to anything I can think of, but usually with an eye towards how can we look at this problem a little differently? Thinking outside the box sometimes works, when simply throwing money at the problem isn't a possibility.
Someone once formulated the "80/20" rule, and it seems to be true. You can do 80% of the work in 20% of the time; the last 20% of work takes the last 80% of the time. You can substitute cost, performance, quality, or anything else for work and time; the percentages still hold true.
And that's what this forum is gonna be about; getting that 80% for only 20%. I'll let the other guys deal with what's the best for unlimited resources. We're gonna talk about how to get close to champagne sound on a beer budget.