Honestly, blacksmithing isn’t that hard
it’s well beyond the reach of most people, specially considering the price of the tooling alone
For cold work, you need a hammer and some hard object. That’s it. Anvil, swage block, piece of rail, random scrap steel, or even a hard rock. That’s it. It’s really not expensive at all, unless you’re buying a whole bunch of brand new unnecessary stuff.
I started out with a rail-anvil I bought for $67, a few hammers and peens for $40, tongs for $20, and a forge for $140. That was more than enough to get started. If you live somewhere that that’s a lot of money, you probably also have a guy in the area who does similar work and has extra tools, and your biggest expense will be fuel for hot work.
We live in a world where hundreds of millions of people are literally starving, dude.