That's typically how I go. Desktops for heavy lifting, something smaller for occasional portability when needed. In fairness, my current laptop wasn't cheap at around $950 for a then-current i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and nVidia GPU, but it's also 8 years old and still perfectly useful for what I need a laptop to do.

It's not just about saving money either. I just can't really get the performance in a laptop, but I occasionally need to be portable. Not too often, but sometimes. Desktop tends to get the budget and laptop gets the rest.