An m2 pro with 16gb ram should be more than enough.
The m2 chip is insanely fast so even the m2 air would probably meet your needs, as long as you’re not doing heavy video editing (air only goes up to 8gb ram)
Discussion
My strategy has always been to upgrade whatever MBP I buy so that it is able to last me this long… My concern with your strategy is that I would have to replace it sooner. Thoughts on that?
I do the same lol. Just upgraded from my 2016 (which still works fine tbh). The thing is the new ones are sooo good and more and more stuff is being delegated to the ☁️ so computers don’t even need to be that good these days. If you wanna future proof i would just prioritize getting a lot of ram. If you ever get really into video editing you’ll want 32gb.