Having a sonar/gps installed beside the console this week. Should I pay $50 more to put it on a ram mount? Opinions?

To me, if you have the money, I would go ahead and do it while your fixing it all up.  If for some reason you don't like it in the future you can always just pull it off, mount it normal, and sell the mount later.  I had one on my previous boat and liked it.

I suppose if the front unit goes down then at least I can spin the console unit around to view from the front.  Is that possible?

Yea alot of people use those for that purpose, especially if they don't have a front unit to begin with.  Just have to make sure you leave enough slack cord behind it for that.

I use RAM mounts for the bow and console graphs because i can adjust them to where I can see them the best for the light/sun conditions.  I can also compare depths from the bow graph with the transducer mounted on the trolling motor to the console graph that is mounted in the bilge area of my boat.  Makes it useful in fishing ledges and its kinda cool to know that the bow is only 6ft deep and the aft of the boat is over 20ft.

RAM Mounts are always worth it.

A Ram mount is the only way to go... you wont regret it