I'd be interested in hearing your suggestions for a basic video editor program. I'm on a Mac, so iMovie is a possibility, but I have also seen others suggested, such as Premiere Elements and Filmora.
iMovie is a pretty good place to start on a Mac. It might be all you need for simple projects involving cuts and fades, basic image corrections, and titles. Premiere Elements would be another consumer-level editor, but I haven't used it.
If you have a long-term goal of reaching a more professional skill level for video editing, you could get Final Cut Pro. Another option is
DaVinci Resolve, which is interesting because it's apparently pro level, but it's free. They do sell a $299 version, if you need "all the features of the free version plus support for multiple GPUs, 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, 3D tools, remote and multi user collaboration tools." I use Adobe Premiere Pro, which comes with a Creative Cloud subscription; if I didn't have that I might be using FCP or DVR.
Even though Resolve is free, the reason I didn't lump it in with free iMovie or cheap Premiere Elements is because the list price is not really where it costs you. It's in that learning curve you mentioned. You should decide whether you do or don't plan to learn pro-level video editing, because if you don't, it may be best to stick with video editors like iMovie and Premiere Elements. If you pick up a program like Final Cut, Resolve, or Premiere Pro, you could easily drown in the menus and buttons trying to find the two or three features you need to just get a basic edit done. They have interfaces denser than Lightroom, with seemingly bottomless dialog boxes and infinite panels and sub-panels full of options. All those options are there for good reasons, but you have to really need or want to learn them to put up with them.
On the other hand, the consumer editors like iMovie boil down the process to the essentials most people need.
