I can't make bold pronouncements based on someone else's life circumstances with much certainty but reading between the lines here:
If I were you, I'd engage in the most realistic practice I could, at 0-400 yards, and then go on one quality guided elk hunt. Find a private land hunt, not one that brags about killing monster bulls, just one that has good sized chunks of private land where they control the hunting pressure and can reliably get you within 400 yards of a branch-antlered bull elk that isn't running/hiding and you aren't worried about some other hunter shooting it while you fiddle with your bipod or whatever.
Show up to THAT hunt with any basic decently accurate rifle that you can hit a pie plate with at 400+ yards under field conditions and I believe you will get the elk-itch scratched.
The most valuable commodity you have, is time. You can trade that time for money and then trade that money for skill or trade it for experience. My first couple of western trips, I had no skill, or money, or time - I was still a teenager - and I scratched down the world's smallest mule deer. Later in life I had a little skill and a little money and shot a 4x5 bull elk. A bit later I shot a cow that required what I considered to be a great deal of skill - dad shot a cow, the herd took off running, and when they'd ran perhaps 125 yards they stopped and milled for a few seconds and when one stepped free I shot her and killed her under a very real time constraint. Later still, I killed a pretty nice 5x5 (he's shoulder mounted on my wall now) with a longer shot, but I had much more time. He was further than the cow, and I didn't waste any time once the decision was made to shoot, but it was a chip shot compared to the time stress of the cow.
I'd like to think that the cow represented a high water mark for me in terms of the underlying skill required to put her on the ground. Part of me wants more skill. But a different part of me knows that the greater desire, is the experience. I can't tell you how to spend your money but I can tell you that I care less than zero about spending a single dollar for a shooting class but I'd spend $10k in the blink of an eye to go on a quality hunt again if I had the extra cash sitting around. One, because of the experience itself. Two, because at the end of the day I'm not the kind of guy who values the skill aspect of hunting. You need the skills, for sure, but hunting is not a competitive shooting sport, or it isn't such the way I see and define it. I value the experience more.
The third elk that I mention above - shooting him was almost an afterthought. The previous afternoon I got notice that my dad had killed what is likely his 'once in a lifetime' bull, on the same trip, a few miles down the road, then I spent the rest of the evening watching three small bulls, one of which was legal (but not big enough to interest me), feed across a meadow, then enter a lake and splash around like three teenagers on a summer afternoon. After dark I went to congratulate my dad and admire his bull. *THAT* was the high water mark of the trip. Shooting the bull the next morning was just checking the last box. Don't get me wrong, I'd quite like to shoot another, but in a very real sense it wasn't the high point of the trip and if you understand what I mean by that, I'd suggest that you practice at home, use whatever scope reticle you think you need to be genuinely effective at 0-400 yards, and go elk hunting. You don't have to blow your retirement on a premium hunt with promises of 300"+ bulls, but don't skimp, either. Go somewhere with a reasonable expectation of a clean chance at a legal bull.
. Its just too much going on for an old codger.
