You are welcome. I am new to the refurb way of thinking and I saved so much money versus buying new hardware don't even last. Refurbished Thinkpads T-series are mostly from companies that retire them and they are battle tested to last.
> I guess I've always hesitated with buying a refurbished laptop and installing it myself... I'm digitally savvy but no coder... so if stuff goes wrong its a major pain
I don't see how that is related. You will be mostly dealing with hardware replacement like RAM or replacing the SSD. Just check the System Log's for errors, no codingg needed.
Debian 12 just came out with a new Long-term-support release in June and is really great. I run it on all my refurbished laptops and servers. Supported for 2-5 years.