Wot he said.
Thats what I meant, spend the money on hire we both pretty much agree on the cost 150-200k and it's somebody elses problemand you get to walk away free and clear at the end.
In another life I lost count of the number of young uns who came to me with the same question, the answer was then and is still the same.
Which way do you burn the money, hire or buy?
The net result is certain on hire and an unlimited unknown on buy.
But then if ya got a rich poppa or money to burn, who cares, the likelihood or not of whether you get the job will not change and my instinct says a future employer is more likely to put you at the bottom than the top of the queue if the "experience" is unsupervised.