i more or less recently realized that WoW really is a choose-your-own-rat-race
to me, it comes down to whether gear is a tool or a goal?
If you see gear more as a tool, then the tool you need depends on what you are doing with the tool.
if you are going to push m+, then you need a level of gear appropriate for that.
if you are going into heroic or mythics raids, then you need gear appropriate for that.
in both cases, and probably pvp too, you also need enchantments and consumables.
but if you want to play the content at its basic level (i.e. run dungeons and raids), you can see all of the same content in heroic dungeons and lfr.
and you don’t need much gear.
you don’t need to enchant everything.
you don’t need massive amounts of consumables
therefore you don’t need a lot of gold.
same content, much less stress, much less grind.
sure, the challenge isn’t quite the same, but you get to be in the content and, as they say, “play the game”.
you can still experience endgame content, without all the grindy parts and the necessity to acquire a ton of gold.
if gear is a goal for you, then grind away you happy rat.