If it's for personal use, buy cheap until you know what you like/want. Then splurge if you can afford it and want to "upgrade".

Fundamentally, for personal use, you will see little difference in performance between a 50$ knife and a 1000$ knife.

As was pointed out in some other comments, the Voctorinox chef knife is a solid pick. It's sharp, easy to sharpen when needed, good size, durable, and it's a beater so oyu don't feel bad for damagind it a bit. I'd start with that, then expand as you need other stuff. For me even a good pairing knife s hardly necessary, you can do most of it with a chef knife anyway once you're comfortable with it in a personal setting.

What I would also recommend though, is getting a two faced sharpening stone like 1000/6000 grit. Learning to sharpen your own knives will make a world of difference, the most expensive knife you can get is garbo if it's not sharp. It's also quite fun to sharpen knives imo.