Multiple mining pools are either doing lightning trials or have it in the works. Some are doing it in public some are not. I suspect in 6 months several pools will support lightning withdrawals. Now, in this person's situation I'd say buy an S9 and connect it to a pool to learn how it works. Lincoin supports paynyms so that's a good privacy option. Their min withdrawal is low. Then once the person is ready grab some serious hash rate machines and the minimum will not be a problem. The question to me is what is low? Its all just math. Its really hard to say do this or don't do this without more information.