Ellis Carrauthers

So I have been fishing all my life but only in the past year have I become serious about it. I've had two baitcasting reels one being a $40 kastking and an SLX DC. My Kastking worked fine for maybe 4 months I got pretty good with it and wouldn't backlash much at all until I got a backlash every cast so I decided I'd make a jump to the SLX DC thinking it could be the quality. Now trying to build my collection of rods I've realized buying a minimum $200 reel is pretty expensive and want to know if a normal baitcaster can be just as good as my DC even if its a little less expensive. Obviously there could've been user error since i'm pretty new to baitcasters it just doesn't make sense how I could cast fine for 4 months then not really at all.