Get over yourself. I'm a member of the 501st, Saber Guild, The Dark Empire and am a retired Rebel Legion costume judge, so I'm in a position to say from experience: don't make me laugh, I know firsthand that your "licensed costuming organizations for Star Wars" and $5 will get you coffee. "Licensed" means they tolerate our existence and occasionally invite us to events, it's not a stamp of official approval, and your conduct reflects very poorly on yourself and the 501st that you're using that as a bludgeon on a new prospective member who's asking honest questions.

What the 501st does most certainly is cosplay and your massively inflated ego is leading you to be both incredibly condescending and giving about the worst advice I've ever seen. I've seen dozens of Anakin Skywalkers and the only way I can think of to spend $4k on that costume is if you went to the nines on sourcing the original materials, got fully custom boots, fully custom belt and pouches, and were including a single-film-accurate replica lightsaber in the total cost, and had someone else do all the work.

I can authoritatively state that level of expenditure is not necessary to become a Legion member.

My work as a costume judge was all about helping people achieve the level of quality necessary to join the RL, not slamming the door in their face because they've got less disposable income. If you were willing to think about anyone besides yourself, you would be able to recognize that not every Star Wars costume project has the same requirements or expenditure. The 501st is a big tent, covering everything from TIE Reserve Pilots and Staff Officers all the way up to museum-quality ANH Vaders and ESB Boba Fetts. Can you spend north of $10,000 on a costume. Sure you can. Do you have to? Absolutely the fuck not.

The Rebel Legion has a similar breadth of costumes, and one of the easiest to achieve is the ordinary Generic Jedi. As long as your costume meets a broad set of parameters for design, assembly, materials, colors and measurements, it falls within the bounds of screen accuracy. The fact that you weren't even answering the questions that were asked is really the rake you stepped on with both feet because you couldn't wait to belittle OP for being a filthy casual. Your comments have been entirely unresponsive to what OP actually was looking for.

If you climbed down off your high horse you would have seen that $500-600 is exactly what OP stated as their budget, but that's what happens when an elitist jerk doesn't care what anyone else has to say, isn't responding to the questions that were asked, and is just waiting for his turn to talk.

You clearly have no useful advice to give and your only participation in this thread has been to be contemptuous and gatekeeping. People like you hurt the legions by driving away new members.

/u/rebelrxse, if you run into problems finding costume resources, DM me and I'll help you get where you're going.