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A Cobra MkIII, that is. The MkIV is a lot slower (and you might not have access to it - it was a special for those that pre-ordered Horizons before it was released).
The MkIII makes a good smuggling ship if dodging troublemakers is what you're into. When you smuggle, you'll get interdicted (by NPCs as well as CMDRs), and if you're crap at combat, the strategy is to do a runner until your FSD comes back online and then supercruise or hyperjump away. The Cobra MkIII is the fastest ship in the game, and nearly the fastest ship when boosting - I think there's one that can go a little faster on boost (boost is like giving it a squirt of nitrous oxide).
Both Cobras are out of your price range at the moment, though. Probably better to concentrate on upgrading your current ship for a while - add better bits where you think they will help. Watch out for power usage - upgrading the power plant and power distributor early on is a good idea. Then you can think about things like better shields.
If it hasn't been said already, always keep cash in reserve to pay the ship rebuy cost if you get destroyed - it's like an insurance excess, and is 5% of the total value of your ship including upgrades, but not including cargo. The latter means you should also always keep some cash back to cover loss of cargo, whether through destruction, piracy, or ship damage. (Heat damage from flying to close to a star can result in your cargo hatch getting damaged, at which point, you start leaking cargo canisters.) Enough cash for several rebuys and at least one fill of expensive cargo is a good idea.
Other possible things to try are mining and exploration. Mining really requires decent cargo space to be worthwhile, and sufficient internal module space for the equipment, but it's quite relaxing if you don't get hassled, and you can make steady money if you go after the more precious metals. Good opportunity to practice fine control of the ship, thanks to having to dodge asteroids. Exploration can make steady cash as well, and you're unlikely to get hassled if you're out of the bubble (human occupied space). With exploring, you fly about, scanning systems and planets, all the while gathering exploration data. When you return to civilisation and dock at a station, you flog all the data to Universal Cartographics.
I'm into exploration at the moment - I gave up my life of petty crime and bottom-feeder thieving and left the bubble last December. I headed to the Pleiades nebula to check out the Unknown Artefact mystery, and only skimmed by the bubble once on my way to Barnard's loop and the other nebulae near it. (I'm actually looking for barnacles, and hoping to get attacked by the Thargoids, but that's a whole different story arc.) I haven't seen another ship in weeks.
Nomad
Nobody loves me but my mother... and she could be jivin' too...
Always zero the throttle right after the hyperspace jump has started (X on the keyboard, or set to zero on HOTAS). That way, it will rapidly drop to the minimum supercruise speed of 30km/s at the end of the jump, which is easily slow enough to get things under control when you're suddenly pointing at a rather close star.
You can come out of the hyperjump, select the star and point straight at it to do the detailed scan, without having to get further away first, which tells you how much time you have to manoeuvre if you arrive already set for the slow speed.
The advanced discovery scanner is the best - it will ID everything in the local system with one scan (no distance limits like with the other discovery scanners). I arrive, do the discovery scan, then scan the star, pull up to scoop fuel, get clear, and then slow down and have a look at the system map to see what else might be worth a detailed scan.
If you don't have one, consider an auto field maintenance unit - very handy for carrying out running repairs, although it can't fix a damaged hull, and it can't fix itself (a module needs to be powered down to be repaired). If you have two AFMUs, each can fix the other. If you have Horizons, you can land on planets and collect materials to make refills for the AFMU. If you don't, see it as a get-out-of-jail card and a warning to be more careful - if you toast the ship, the AFMU ammo can get used up quite quickly on repairs. The lesser ones might not have enough capacity to get all modules/weapons back up to 100% depending on how much damage you've taken.
Nomad
Nobody loves me but my mother... and she could be jivin' too...