Hopefully this thread helped with your decision process bigpoppamac31. You certainly received a full range of advice. Everything from the 2014 base model (with FD) to a 16 GB i7 or even
the next nMP (

) was on the table at some point.
I think that this choice is a good one for your use case. Even the folks that counseled you toward either extreme should agree that you did not go too far in the
wrong direction.
I predict that you will be impressed with the speed of your new Mac from the moment it arrives and that it will maintain that level of performance for years. Seriously! That FD mini is going to boot so fast it will put a smile on your face.
Enjoy!