Photography equipment can be expensive, and the truth of the matter is that getting new gear won’t help your photography skills.
Learning more about photography will help your photography skills.
New equipment should help you do your work as a photographer more fluidly.
For example, the flash that was built into a camera that I was using recently was limited in terms controlling the precision of the amount of light that was falling on the subject. The camera had flash intensity/brightness settings that were only adjustable in terms of high, medium or low.
This made working with flash less fluid because the brightness of flash falling on the subject was controlled by distance to the subject instead of a flash exposure meter that was built into the camera or the flash itself.
Since the subjects were usually people who were in motion, it was hard to get just the right amount of flash onto the subject(s).
This is a case where I would sink some money into a separate flash unit and a couple of other flash related items.
The camera that I was using was borrowed, but I have a similar camera. If the owner of the camera asked me what I thought of the camera I would have mentioned that I found the built-in flash limiting.
I would have suggested the same flash set-up that I use for my camera.
An inexpensive separate flash unit with variable aperture settings and a flash meter built into the flash, something called a “Wein Safe-Synch” and a coiled synchronization cord.
You could probably buy all three of these items for less than a hundred bucks.
In my opinion, assuming that the photographer already understood flash or wanted to learn about how to use flash, the money spent on these three items would help the photographer work more fluidly, precisely, and efficiently as a photographer.