Classics scholars, what is the best English-Latin/Latin-English dictionary for an affordable price?

Answer 1

When I was first taking Latin prose composition courses, I tended to use the Langenscheidt Latin dictionaries (there is also a pocket version).

Whitaker words is a useful electronic Latin dictionary. There is both a downloadable version, as well as the Whitaker website itself.

If you are working on corpus linguistics and need to know how a particular word is used across the entirety of Latin literature, you will want to go with the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, which exists in both electronic and hardcopy forms (thought the TLL is probably overkill for your purposes).