How much money to do have to spend? You can get by with a cheap rangefinder but not with a cheap pair of binos. If your funds are limited get the rangefinder for now. I had a cheap pair of binos once.
If you're thinking about spending $80 on binos I would suggest to take that money and go out for some prime rib and crab legs because the30 minutes it takes to eatis going to be infinitly more pleasurable than a lifetime of using a P.O.S binocular.
If there were only 2 binoculars in the world... $80 or $1080... I would buy the $1080 pair every time, even if I lost them every year and had to re-buy every year.