Do you spend more on your cartridge or tone arm?

$5 is a serious table. 4 point Kuzma and an MC cart at the same price point will do. If you like invest more time and money into carts at this point to discover exactly what you like. Who knows what happens at this level. You could find some Goldring Elite wins out. At this level carts will give us all the difference. Upgrading after this won't get all that much more and the downstream equipment to extract it would be insane.

I don’t think there is a rule of thumb. It’s more about finding a synergistic balance, and I’m sure that distribution of cost varies as one goes up the range towards higher end gear (or down towards less costly gear).

FWIW: I have a Clearaudio Innovation turntable ($15k), two Clearaudio Universal 12" arms ($6700 each) and two Lyra Atlas Lambda cartridges ($14k each). So my cartridges are double the cost of my tonearms. It’s an excellent balance of gear for this particular case, but I wouldn’t generalize on it at all. One also has to take the phono-stage into account. That matters as much.

Yes, it is complicated. And you didn't mention phono stage.

Very generally, for $5k table I would consider $2k-$2.5k tonearm. As for the cartridge, assuming new and full retail, I would definitely stay below $2k.

@inna it depends...

For example, the Clearaudio Concept Signature turntable with Tracer tonearm is in the $5k range or so. It’s the real deal. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a $4k cartridge on it, like a Hanna Umami Red, Dynavector Te Kaitora Rua or a Lyra Kleos. The table and arm are that good they can take advantage of it (and I already know Clearaudio arms work really well with DV and Lyra).

Synergy trumps trying to generalize about cost balance. I just think trying to do the latter is futile and can lead to sub-optimal or unhappy combinations.