If you have up to $5k to put into lightning I think the best way at the moment is to simply buy base layer bitcoin and use it to open a lightning channel on a mobile wallet like Electrum or Phoenix. Then loop out a large chunk and open another channel to a different peer. You could do the same again.

If you are starting with small amounts like a $50-100 and want to DCA with lightning this needs a different approach. I would start by sending sats into a custodial wallet like coinos.io. Then after stacking 1-2 million sats I'd use that to open a noncustodial LN channel. Loop out a large chunk to give yourself receiving capacity and keep stacking LN sats until its full again. If onchain fees remain low, continue to loop out to the base layer. If onchain fees are high you can consider looping out into liquid until the next low fee environment. You might want to look a bit more into liquid too so that you know more about what you're holding.