I think some foiks have success in trying to clean out dust and stuff from their keyboard to get keys working but I can't say I've had much luck with that. And taking it into a computer repair place on an older pc is probably not cost effective.
My situation seems a lot like yours. while I ended up with an inexpensive on-sale 14" HP laptop (about $300), I seriously looked at Chromebooks which don't have much of a hard drive and so a bit less expensive. There are also used/remanufactured computers as an option.
Instead of Word and Excel, consider using Google's Docs and Sheets, and you store your file in a Google G-drive instead of a hard drive. They're free and almost identical in functionality.
You may get some better advice from tech-types, I'm just a run-of-the-mill user, but that's how I worked it out. Good luck, it's all a pain.
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