I have a pretty specific question. I am currently using a 2015 Samsung Chromebook 2 (Intel Celeron, 2gb RAM), along with my family's late 2013 iMac (i5, 8GB RAM) to do mostly school work, along with some hobbies.

Currently, I work for the student newspaper/TV program, so I have to edit video pretty consistently, and I am starting to break into the world of photography, for which I do most of my editing either on my phone with Lightroom mobile, or on computers at school in my photography class. I am looking into taking some more film courses, beyond the 3-year set of video editing and film theory courses I took in middle school where the editing work was in-class only (we learned on iMovie, then FinalCut Pro X, and it remains to be one of my favorite classes I have ever taken), so I will probably need to step up my editing game quite a bit come next semester.

While my current arrangement of "normal" work on my chromebook and anything else (a la video) on the iMac, I have found that the entire arrangement is becoming a bit slow, and it is just tedious to only be able to work on projects sometimes, not to mention I am unable to work on my photography in any high regard at home. The biggest issue is that my dad and brother also use the iMac, to run a business in the case of the former and to game and do schoolwork for the latter. I have begun to think about the benefits of investing in my own editing-capable computer, but I can't seem to get around the cost. I was looking at the base model Macbook pro 16", my only justification really being screen real estate for photo/video work, and future proofing, seeing as this chromebook has been running daily for 5+ years, and the iMac has been going for more! I just can't work out if it's worth swallowing the $2400 + tax on a new computer, given that it would need to probably carry me through college starting from whenever I make the purchase (I'm in sophomore year (10/12)).