When I first got in the hobby I bought a cheap Hobbico 60 watt iron that did the job just fine. But I got tired of replacing the junk tips that would pit and erode. I finally purchased a Hakko 936 soldering station and I have never replaced another tip. Seriously, I bought an extra tip with the soldering station and it is still in the packaging. I bought that soldering station over 10 years ago. Do I do much soldering now? No, not really, maybe a couple of times a week. But I used to assemble my own sub C packs back in the day, so the iron has had plenty of use. I have gone through a couple of the cleaning sponges though. I also recommend a metal cleaner like a metal bristle brush, only to be used occasionally. The problem areas people usually have when soldering are not enough solder on the tip when disassembling joints and not using flux on new joints. I know, rosin core solder and all, but do yourself a favor and buy some rosin flux and always use it on new joints and wires before tinning. And also as said above, get a good chisel tip at least 4-5mm wide. It's the only tip I use, and I have used my iron to solder on circuit boards to fix TVs and PCs.

If you can't afford a Hakko the Yihua and Aoyue 936/937/939 stations are great and take Hakko tips. I've had mine for 5+ years and it's still going strong.

I bet I had that same Hobbico years ago. Those were the crappiest tips ever. Big ole pit in the tip after a couple of uses, then in no time the pit eroded so much of the tip that it resembled a horseshoe. Lol. Never had that happen on my Checkpoint TC-950 or my Hakko FX988D. Only replaced one tip on the Checkpoint because it was discoloring a bit, but still functioned normal and no pitting.

I bought 2 of the Yihua stations that used the Hakko tips. One took the Hakko tip just fine, the other (same model purchased at the same time) wouldn’t. The ceramic heating element was just a smidge bigger and would not take the Hakko tip. Nonetheless, they worked really well.