How do I start?

I don’t have much money to buy crypto, so what about mining it? I have a pc with a 3080ti, and a ryzen 5600x. Ik if I mined btc or eth it’ll be a slog, so is there a smaller coin I can mine that’ll let me trade up to those? Or is that not how it works? Is it worth it? Are there other ways of getting into this? When would a good time to buy crypto? Would the strategy be buy a cheap coin for nothing, wait for it to blow up then trade it if another? But then at that point why not cash it out? Or am I being stupid?