If what one wants is a Healey in good condition to drive, for a reasonable price, buy someone else's restored car. Restoring a car properly usually is very expensive. Survivors in decent condition are few and far between.
Restoring a car can be an enjoyable activity, much like going fishing or going on a holiday. Restoration projects can be a fun. Every part of the project is a challenge, and one feels a sense of accomplishment after figuring out how all these obsolete British parts work and fit together. At the end of the project, one hopefully will have a beautiful and driveable work of art.
Like most people, I hate rust. Healeys do seem to attract rust, but some have survived much better than others. From what I have seen, many (or most) of the relatively inexpensive project cars out there might be better thought of as parts cars. By the time one takes a rusty hulk and rebuilds it from the bottom up, this no longer is an inexpensive car. An endless list of parts on most unrestored cars - even the better ones - are not in good enough condition to reuse or refurbish. When buying parts for a restoration, one needs to think in terms of tens of thousands of dollars, and often quite a few of those tens of thousands.
Many who set out on a restoration do not finish it. They lose interest, run out of money, or develop health problems. Others started both of the two Healey projects that I am currently working on. And I have had a few other incomplete projects offered to me over the past few years. Picking up someone else's project, providing that they started with a solid car and did good quality work, is another way to become a Healey owner.